


Hold Me in Your Memory

by Imanga



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Police, Childhood Trauma, Criminal Investigation, F/M, Light Angst, Murder Mystery, NaruHina 2020, Physical Abuse, Psychological Trauma, Smut, Thriller, Time Travel, Two pov
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:01:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 34,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27479239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imanga/pseuds/Imanga
Summary: When 2008 rookie Detective Uzumaki Naruto discovers that he can communicate with 2019 Crime analyst Hyūga Hinata, they embark together on a manhunt that defies space and time. But, can the two of them really face the Rinnegan Killer, the serial killer that destroyed both their lives?Written for the NaruHina 2020 November "Crime AU" theme[Please read the tags for indications about sensitive and potential unwanted content]
Relationships: Hyuuga Hinata/Uzumaki Naruto
Comments: 26
Kudos: 47





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

> Hellooooo everybody!
> 
> Here's my contribution to the NaruHina 2020 monthly challenge around the "Crime AU" theme -which is also my first fanfic contribution to a fandom event, yeah! I'm getting the feeling that everyone may go for the "angst" theme instead this month, so I'm trying to bring some balance to the Force with this piece.
> 
> Although this is technically a one-shot, if you're familiar with my other work, you know I just can't do short and this story is again another proof of this as it ended up being over 100 pages long. Therefore, I've decided to divide it into three parts and to post one every upcoming Monday of the month -so if you want to read everything in one go, wait two more weeks before picking up this story (and yes, I'm aware that this defeats the purpose of a one-shot but bear with me on this one, pleaaase)
> 
> /!\ Disclaimer before I stop blabbing and you can get to your reading /!\ 
> 
> I don't hate any Naruto characters (quite the opposite actually), but this is a crime story and some characters aren't as nice as usual in there, so don't destroy me for doing someone dirty! Also, let's be real, this is mainly plot, especially today -you will have fluff, flirting and even my first attempt EVER at writing smut in the next chapters but still, mainly plot. You've been warned!
> 
> Enjoy ^_^

It was everywhere.

On TV screens across the country. 

In every newspaper you’d come across at your local kiosque. 

On the air each time you’d turn on the radio. 

All over the internet. 

And on every breathing lips.

It actually felt like, no matter where you came from, no matter where you went, you just couldn’t escape it, its name following you even in the most intimate places, sticking to your skin like the smell of cigarettes or cheap whiskey.

Except that for Uzumaki Naruto, this wasn’t just a feeling.

That was his job.

On this frisky Sunday morning of September 21st, 2008, the news was travelling from one citizen to another almost faster than the speed of light, fear mixing with excitement as they would mouth his name like he was some kind of boogeyman who would come for them in their sleep if they dared pronouncing it louder.

 _He_ was back.

Naruto forced his way through the crowd of vultures massed together at the entrance of the apartment building, fighting for a picture or any new piece of information that they could get their claw-like hands on to bring back to the rag that employed them, and flashed his badge to the Police officer that dutifully guarded the double door, repelling any trespassers. 

The officer gave him a nod of the head and let Naruto in, the thick glass door closing behind him in a deep cling, the din of the outside scavengers fading in the background. 

He let out a breath of relief. Their astonishing sound was giving him a headache.

He blinked a couple of times, his eyes getting used to the semi-darkness of the lobby. He set off again, passing by a couple of colleagues on his way to the elevator in front of which another officer was helping people dress up in white coveralls -a mandatory outfit for anyone wanting to access the crime scene. He patiently waited for his turn and, once almost every inch of his body had been covered up to make sure he wouldn’t compromise the place, he headed for the fifth floor. The metal doors of the elevator shaft jolted as they lazily opened, the busy corridor sucking Naruto into its swarming guts. 

An ocean of Police personnel surrounded him, men and women in white overalls yapping at each other, taking pictures with obnoxious flashes for their reports, measuring every surface, sweeping the entire place for a fingerprint, a hair, a drop of blood. Anything organic that did not belong to this upper-class block, really.

Once again, he navigated through the bodies, pushing everyone around carefully as he went for apartment 501 and its open door. He squeezed himself in, passing Nara Shikamaru and Yamanaka Ino, the two lab techs he grabbed the occasional beer with, and discreetly waved at his colleague and teammate Haruno Sakura, located a few meters away from him passed the entrance, down the flat’s hallway. Her eyes slid to him as she listened to a tall and exhausted-looking man repositioning his mask’s elastics on his ears.

“Took you long enough.”

Naruto turned towards the voice and discovered Uchiha Sasuke right behind him, awaiting his turn to step inside the apartment. Dark-haired, broody, sardonic, haughty, good-looking, the Assistant Inspector was the mascot of their squad and he’d never let slip an occasion to remind Naruto that he was his superior -either in age or in rank. He extended a hand covered by a thick latex glove to Naruto and the blond, suddenly remembering why his teammate had sent him to the nearest konbini, handed him a pack of SevenStars. Sasuke grabbed them swiftly, humming a cold “thank you” before stuffing them in the pocket of his coveralls and focusing on their boss, Hatake Kakashi, who had turned around and acknowledged their presence. 

Prick.

“Ah, there you are, Uchiha-kun, Uzumaki-kun. We can start, now. Haruno-kun, if you could do us the honors”, announced their leader, the shape of a yawn visible through the tissue pressing on his lower face.

Sakura gave him a nod and cleared her throat, before starting her report of the situation at hand.

“The victims are Katō Dan and Senju Tsunade, both 53 years old. The bodies were discovered around 4 a.m. this morning by a Police officer sent over after a neighbor had signaled some suspicious activity coming from their place. The coroner estimates the times of death between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. for now.”

She quickly beckoned at all three men to follow her and they carefully left the genkan, crossing the soberly decorated hallway to enter the living room, where the body of a man laid on a darkened carpet, his face facing down. Naruto twitched at this sight. He wasn’t used to seeing dead people yet. Trying not to interrupt the tech crew busy with taking pictures and collecting evidence, Sakura kept on going.

“The first victim was found in the living room, where the killer let him drown in his own blood after seemingly stabbing him multiple times. It doesn’t look like the body was moved otherwise. This way, please.”

She then took them through another hallway, into a bedroom. Naruto’s fists clenched at the thought of the scene he knew they were going to find.

The couple’s bedroom was big, bigger than Naruto’s own living area, and delicately decorated. Frames picturing the life of the happy couple ornated an expensive-looking wooden drawer, and the bed was tightly made, navy blue silk sheets with more throw pillows than Naruto had ever seen in his life before. Unfortunately, this nice scenery was not what his three colleagues were focusing on right now.

“That damn bastard. That’s nasty”, commented their boss under his mask.

Next to the bed, leaning against the wall, a blonde woman in her fifties waited, still. She had probably just taken her shower, Naruto thought, judging by the thick, white bathrobe she wore, and it was a shame to see how he had dirtied her up. He gave a quick side glance to Sasuke, who looked as stoic as always, his hawk-like stare locked on the lower part of the victim’s body.

Naruto closed his eyes, unwilling to see it again. Once for today was enough.

Kakashi let out a deep sight and his head rose to examine the large, bloody symbol that had been drawn above the victim’s body on the white wall behind her.

Naruto had seen it many times before. On television. On the internet. In some of his Police Academy textbooks. On tagged walls in the shady parts of town, even. He had never suspected that he would ever see it in person.

Huge, disturbing, hypnotic, an eye with concentric circles covering the eyeball scrutinize them, haughty. Naruto felt shivers running down his spine. 

“The second victim was found in the bedroom, disemboweled, under _his_ symbol. She was probably still alive when he did that to her” explained Sakura, her voice fading into a whisper.

Kakashi nodded.

“No doubt, that’s him.”

He remained silent a moment longer, lost in the contemplation of the macabre staging, before finally turning around to face his team, gravitas seizing his eyes. 

“You all know what that means then”, and his team stiffened at the implications of his unusually harsher tone, “The Rinnegan killer’s back in town.”

  
*

  
Some people liked doing crossword puzzles. Some enjoyed their Sunday sudoku. Others favored origami. As for Hinata, she was into the “oldy but goody” knitting needles and balls of yarn. 

There was something in making stitches that she found oddly satisfying. Nerve-soothing. It waved off the clouds in her brain, making the sun shine on the answers she was so desperately looking for. It was her ultimate go-to, and it had never failed her once in her life.

And well, it also filled her drawers with pretty unique pieces of clothing. 

Inuzuka Kiba tutted her when he noticed what she was doing, but she didn’t pay attention to him. She was used to. He liked to make fun of her and of her “grandma’s hobby” as he called it, though she knew deep down he understood and respected it. Let him have his fun and her, her groundbreaking revelation. 

Next to them, behind his computer screen, Aburame Shino repressed a yawn, his sunglasses slightly falling from his nose.

“Are you ok, Shino-kun?” Asked Hinata with a hint of worry in her voice, her work dropping on her knees as she slightly leaned in his direction. Shino stretched on his chair, apathetic, and gave her a slow nod of the head.

“You should take a break, we’ve been locked in this room for too long, this isn’t good for you” pressed Hinata, her tone filled with the motherly and affectionate vibes she seemed to have only for him.

Although he was only a couple of months younger than Kiba and her, Shino was still a doctoral candidate, ergo: a student. He may be coming from the IT department of the country’s most prestigious university, he was still a student nonetheless and their benjamin on top of it. It was their duty to take care of him.

At the word “break”, Kiba jumped out of his seat. “Excellent idea, Hinata” he proclaimed loudly, his voice giving away his excitement as his teammates stared at his tired features. His ungroomed three-day stubble betrayed how much time it had been since he last took a decent shower. Expertly grabbing his jacket from the coat rack and putting it on in one incredibly fluid movement, he threw Hinata her own, the cold leather burning like fire for a split second against the unguarded skin of her hands. Seeing his master readying himself to leave, Akamaru, the large Great Pyrenees dog that was resting at the foot of Kiba’s chair, got up, his wagging tail betraying his eagerness to get out.

Hinata smiled and with a move of the head, silently approved Kiba’s initiative before putting away her “thinking gear” in a drawer of her desk and getting up as well, Shino mimicking her straight away.

The four of them exited their shared office -a tiny room with only a small window and not much light, but a room all to themselves nonetheless- and agreed to head to the nearest konbini to grab some breakfast.

“Hey, if this isn’t the _Minority Report_ team! How's it hanging, Inuzuka?”

They all stopped in the middle of the Police Station’s lobby to take a look in the direction of the voice that had hailed them and saw Assistant Inspector Sarutobi Konohamaru energetically waving at them from the other side of the hall. Kiba grinned back at him, his hands cupping his mouth to help his voice reach the man.

“Better than you, Sarutobi! At least, _I’m_ working on the front line of crime-fighting, unlike someone else I know!” 

The ghost of a smile passed on Hinata’s lips as she witnessed the two inspectors’ playful quarrel, patiently waiting by Shino’ side for Kiba to be done so they could go eat, Akamaru already at the door.

Around their precinct, they were known to everyone as “Minority Report” and though many officers obviously considered them a joke and a waste of time and money, they were indeed working on the front line of crime-fighting in Japan -though Hinata personally would have never described it in those exact terms. _Predictive policing_ seemed more appropriate to her, but she had to concede that Kiba’s description had a certain ring to it.

The late November sun kissed them good morning as they stepped out of the station and filled their lungs with the deliciously cold and polluted air of the big city, ice water running down their lungs and leaving them short-breathed. 

The konbini was only a short distance away from the precinct and it didn’t take long to their disparate quartet to reach the small shop. They must have offered a curious sight to every passerby, for Kiba wasn’t ashamed to show the world his comfy hobo wardrobe: long and unkempt hair pushed back, an old patched hooded fur-lined coat, worn-out grey sweatpants and plastic slippers were his go-to clothing. Next to him, wearing an outfit that made him look like some cheap J-drama grotesque representation of what regular people thought a hacker would look like, Shino was hiding behind the double shield of a fashionable high, upturned collar sweatshirt, completed by a long coat with a hood covering most of his higher face and sunglasses resting on his nose, just to make sure than no human emotion could be effectively translated by his face. The tiny-framed Hinata completed their group, disheveled green hair following the curved of her body, hugged by a tightly-fitting leather jacket, slim black jeans and military-style boots.

As they stood on the threshold of the small store, Kiba took out of one of his pockets a leash and crouched down to Akamaru’s height, gently petting the dog as he tied him to a nearby pole.

“I’m sorry buddy”, he apologized to him, “I’ll be right back with some good food, I promise.”

As if he understood, Akamaru emitted a small bark and sat down, obediently, and the team dived into the small but heated space, on the lookout for their breakfast, their weary but joyful chatter waking up the business.

Unlike most Assistant Inspectors, Inuzuka Kiba did not work in the field, collecting information and physical evidence, talking to witnesses and informants, solving crimes. Not long after being promoted, he had witness the brutal murder of one his teammates, leaving him scarred for life and deemed “unfit” for active duty. Though he never addressed his trauma, Akamaru, his service dog, never left his side and Hinata always kept a close eye on him each time Kiba had to be separated from his furry companion, as if she was fearing an outbreak of some sort.

While waiting for the cashier to pour her oden from behind the counter, her thoughts escaped her control for a short while and she wondered what it must feel like to be an _actual_ Police officer -the kind that did confront crime face-to-face on a daily basis. 

A long, long time ago, she had wanted to become one herself, but her family had actively discouraged her from it. A waste of talent, a poorly paid job, the lack of social recognition. Had she no ambition, had harshly asked her her father when she had dared to voice her project to him? No, no, this was unacceptable, she had to go to college and become someone, do something with her life. Therefore Hinata, being nothing but a good, devoted daughter, had been to university, earning herself a Master’s degree in Criminal Justice Research, before getting herself certified as a Crime analyst and eventually joining the ranks of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department personnel, much to her father’s dismay. 

The cashier handed her a large and burning cup of dashi with floating pieces of ganmodoki, kabocha, daikon and konjac, and she bowed to them while accepting it, before pulling her wallet out and tilting her head towards her colleagues who were waiting in line behind her to pay.

“They’re all on me”, she told the cashier with the most relaxed smile she had, ignoring their grunts of protest as she handed the old grandmother who was serving them enough notes to cover twice the amount of food they had grabbed.

“Keep the change”, added Hinata with a polite smile before pushing her colleagues towards the door of the shop, acting like it was no big deal

“You don’t have to pay for the food every single time we go out”, mumbled Kiba as he untied Akamaru, the dog jumping around, overjoyed. “We make our own money too.”

Hinata blushed slightly but dismissed his statement with a move of the hand she wanted as casual as possible. She had actually thought that her father would cut her off as soon as he would have learned where she was going to work but, to her surprise, all he had done was sigh and proclaim that even the angriest storm could not force the mountain to bend, allowing her to maintain the comfortable life she had always been accustomed to despite her civil servant salary. The sole thought of her luxurious apartment, bought for her by her father and way too big for a single person, was enough for her to feel ashamed. It only seemed fair to give back to the community, one way or another.

“Thank you, Hinata-san” politely said Shino behind his sunglasses. Hinata smiled at him and the group hurried back to the office, the cold morning pressing them inside the warm embrace of their room, bursts of light small talks punctuating their break.

They hadn’t finished eating their breakfast yet that Yūhi Kurenai, the Inspector and leader of their unit, was already walking in, calmly greeting them all as she dropped her bag on her desk.

“Enjoy your food, team! We have a long day ahead of us, so recharge!” She told them enthusiastically, before taking off her coat and turning on her computer.

“Yeah, like yesterday, and the day before, and the week, and the month…” sniggered Kiba while giving the rest of his nato maki to Akamaru, Kurenai tutting him with a disapproving smile.

Just like Kiba, it was no coincidence that Kurenai, of all the Inspectors of the precinct, had been chosen to lead their team. She had given birth right before the creation of their unit and their hierarchy had probably deemed her unwillingness to retire and raise her daughter inappropriate, thus pushing her into the background with the “Minority Report” pariahs. Hinata knew for a fact that this decision had been hard on the woman, for the two of them had covered the subject at length during late night breaks at the coffee machine or in the women’s locker room. Eventually, she had come to make peace with it, her initial feeling of injustice having been replaced with a deeply rooted rage to prove everyone that their project was more than just a joke or a daydream.

Who had established said project in the first and why was a mystery to them four, but little over a year ago, as Hinata was finally getting settled in her job at the Central office, her then-manager had told her that she had been assigned on a new project that -if it came to an end- could possibly revolutionize modern policing and that she was leaving for this precinct. First incredibly excited by the opportunity, she had quickly become disillusioned. 

The idea was for them to develop an algorithm that, with the help of mathematics, predictive analytics and other analytical techniques in law enforcement, would help investigating teams solve cold cases, bring new suggestions and leads, and even predict crimes, offenders, perpetrators identities and victims. Simply put, the precinct commissioner wanted them to come up with a program that would do the job of ten Police officers -and why not serve coffee, while at it. Nonsensical.

The general public usually imagined predictive policing as a revolutionary technology capable of stopping crime before it started, pretty much like in the aforementioned movie starring Tom Cruise and that girl from _Cold Case_. However, innovation in real life had its limits and there was only so much an artificial intelligence could do. Depending on the method used, they could identify people and locations with increased risk of crime based on data of the times, locations and nature of past crimes in the city; nevertheless, the algorithm could only provide them with insight on where and when Police officers should patrol or maintain a presence, not pinpoint the exact place and time a crime would happen.

And still. No matter how stupid Hinata thought their hierarchy was, they worked on their baby, trying to raise it with all their love and make it the best disadvantaged child in its class, thriving for it to exceed the limitations money, time and a lack of personnel were putting on it.

After a little more than a year focused on the “predictive” part, the team had presented a first tool that they had baptized _SUNA_ -which stood for something Hinata actually did not remember- and was currently being tested by _actual real cops_ , something the four of them considered “sick”, to quote Kiba.

Their easy chatter accompanied them for the rest of their breakfast break, the room lightning up with laughs and rising rays of sun shining through their small window. Kurenai even put on their favorite “angry people music” and, for the rest of the morning, the happy mood contained in the little cocoon their dysfunctional group had created wrapped them in a blissful blur of warmth and love, making them momentarily forget about the vicissitudes and tribulations of the outside world. 

And really, wasn’t that the most important? 

  
*

  
The mood wasn’t as jolly near Hatake Kakashi. The thirty-something man had been an Inspector for quite some time now, having successfully passed the Keibu promotion tests in his late twenties and become the youngest member of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police at the time to achieve such a feat. This came at a cost though, as his hair had prematurely turned grey in the process, but he didn’t care: he had actually found it to suit him better, making him look older and thus, earning him instinctively more devotion and respect from the people around him.

As an elite unit supervisor in the Criminal Investigations Division 1 -or so they said in high places-, Assistant Inspectors and Sergeants had succeeded one another under his guidance over the years, like day succeeded night and spring winter, and the word at the coffee machine was that he was seriously foreseen as the next Director of the Division.

However, Kakashi was not exactly the type that played politics at work or listened to corridor gossip and even though he couldn’t care less about an eventual promotion, he wasn’t an idiot either. He knew how determinant their new case was going to be for his team’s careers and anxiety was slowly but surely starting to get to him. It wasn’t just their reputation that they were playing right now, but the one of the entire Tokyo Metropolitan Police, as well as their potential entire future within it. 

But then… Why did this case have to fall upon him the one year he was leading Team Useless?

“Uzumaki-kun, do you really believe that now’s the time to eat noodles???”

“Hum, Haruno-san, you spilled your coffee all over my freshly printed report.”

“And you, stop smoking inside! That’s a disgusting habit! If you wanna die, fine, but do it on your own outside! No need to drag us into the grave with you!”

“I’m using my pen to stir my noodles; could someone lend me one in the meantime?”

Behind the mask he had been wearing continuously for over a week now -courtesy of a persistent cold- Kakashi let out a deeply plaintive sigh of despair. Time was running against them, but right now, as he gazed powerless at his team fighting each other over their shared desk in the open space, all eyes on them, it felt like he was the only one aware of it. No wonder his hair had turned grey.

“Guys, please”, he begged them half-heartedly for form, his voice barely audible over the sound of their bickering, “Everyone is watching us…”

Across the room, his eyes crossed with fellow Inspector Asuma’s and he gave him a smiley waving of the hand, met with obvious irritation. _Yup_ , he thought to himself, _I’m sure that if all the bigshots from Central Office saw this, they would think twice about nominating for the Director position…_

Naruto voraciously slurped the last bit of ramen and soup left at the bottom of his cup before licking his pen and sliding it back in his shirt pocket before an horrified Sakura. He then dropped the empty cup in the garbage can next to him and, a satisfied grin on his face, reported to his team that he was ready for their update meeting, Sasuke nonchalantly crushed his cigarette butt on the latest edition of the _Police Magazine_ that was laying on their desk, the faint smell of burned plastic travelling to their noses as they all lazily got up and reached for an empty conference room. 

“Okay,” started Kakashi as his team sat down around the oval wooden table of the tiny room while he pulled a mobile white board in front of them, “Let’s begin by recapitulating everything we already know about our guy.”

“We know that the first occurrence of his symbol goes back to March 21, 1986, with the double homicide of Namikaze Minato and his wife Kushina, followed a week later, on the 28th, by the death of Umino Kohari”, he enunciated as he wrote down the key informations for everyone to see. “Both women had been disembowelled and found under the infamous Rinnegan symbol and, according to the unit working the case at the time, they hadn’t found any physical evidence nor serious leads that could have oriented them toward the killer. A hunting knife was estimated to be the crime weapon but never found, probably safe to assume the murderer left with it each time. ”

“What about the sons of the victims?” Interrupted Sakura and she frantically searched through her notes, a triumphant finger rubbing over some highlighted information. “I read that they actually both had interactions with our target. What about that?”

Kakashi shook his head, dismissing her suggestion.

“Umino Kohari’ son was four years old and the Namikaze kid, three. Not only were their testimony extremely light and unreliable but they probably hardly remember a thing about the murders now. Both kids mentioned seeing a ‘Mister’ in their house, but we cannot be sure about it.” Sakura sank in her chair, disappointed. On her right, Naruto’s guts tightened and his throat clenched, but he maintained his seemingly relaxed demeanor on the outside.

“Then”, kept going the Inspector, “The guy disappears and resurfaces eleven years later. This time, he kills Uchiha Fugaku and Mikoto on June 21, 1997-”

“Relatives of yours?” Sneered behind her teeth Sakura for Sasuke, this later calmly giving her the finger without laying his eyes off Kakashi, who cleared his voice to regain the attention of his audience, obviously displeased with the unwelcome interruption. Naruto often watched his partners tease one another and bicker like an old married couple, but never took part in what Kakashi called their “mating ritual”; after all, both of them were older and higher in the hierarchy, so it wasn’t his place to intervene. Plus, he had barely joined their team and his lack of experience made him feel extremely bashful, the fear of being looked down by the rest of them preventing him from speaking his mind most of the time during serious occasions like this meeting. 

“And again a third person, Yakushi Nonō, on the 28th, with both women disemboweled under the symbol. And just like with the previous killing spree, no physical evidence or witnesses. Which leads us to…”

Kakashi adjusted the height of the board to keep writing comfortably.

“...to last Sunday, with the murder of Katō Dan and Senju Tsunade, on September 21, 2008.”

He scratched the mask covering his face and turned to his team with an expecting look. “So, where do we start from here?”

On the opposite side of the table from Naruto, Sasuke’s face twisted into a scold.

“Eleven years, that’s an awfully long time for a dormant stretch, don’t you think?”

“But not unheard of”, pinpointed in-between Sakura.

“The real questions are why two couples and a single woman each time? And why gutting the women and leaving this drawing?” 

“Could be a stand-in for sexual intercourse in his mind, who knows.”

“Based on the previous cycles, he’s gonna claim another victim next Sunday then, ya know.” 

Naruto’s voice came out louder than expected, as he had gathered all his courage to expel those words, his eyes fixated on the white board, unable to take them away from the first names of the list. His colleagues all turned to him, everyone holding their breath for a short second. “And probably a woman, like the previous isolated victims.”

“Exactly, Uzumaki-kun, which means...” Kakashi wrote down the days of the week, circling the _21_ and the _28_ , “that we have exactly five days to try to catch this bastard and save a life.”

Five days. That was an awfully short time to stop the most famous Japanese serial killer of the last two decades. Even though they benefited from the special privilege of having any case-related evidence treated by CSI being given absolute priority, Naruto didn’t know if they could make it. Hell, he knew for sure he couldn’t. After all, he only was a young, inexperienced rookie Sargeant; how could he make a difference in the case of a guy that had managed to kill over the span of 22 years without ever getting caught? 

Rage and despair clashed in his stomach, causing bile to rise to his lips. He wanted to do more, he needed to do more, he _had_ to do more for this case, but he didn’t know _how_. He had sacrificed too much to get where he was now and couldn’t let the chance of life time slip through his fingers. He had to get his shit together, he had to…

The doors of the elevator opened on the nothing of the second basement, reeks of death powerfully hitting his senses and taking over his brain. A flash of Senju Tsunade’s wet guts leaking outside of her on her delicate robe and the immaculate carpet of her bedroom crossed his mind and, for a second, he felt like he was going to faint. A metallic smell invaded his nose and, disoriented, he stumbled outside the cabin, across the darkened hall and straight into the nearest wall, his shoulder hitting it heavily, his open mouth gasping for air, the drawing of a circle pupil imprinted on his retinas. 

_No no no no no_ , he panicked, closing his eyelids as tight as possible as he slipped into a wake nightmare. 

As a child and a teenager, Naruto had been no stranger to crippling panic attacks and night terrors. Over the years, they had slowly faded, both in occurrence and intensity, and it had actually been years since he last experienced one of those.

In his chest, his breath accelerated, sending cold and putrid flushes of stale air into his lungs and blood as a distorted voice asked him deep down in a corner of his mind if milk was okay. Behind his lids, curls of darkness swarmed together to form a towering silhouette, ready to overtake him and devour him whole. No, he didn’t want to think about this again, not now-

“Uzumaki-san, what a pleasure to see such a lively presence down there.”

Naruto abruptly opened his eyes and gasped as much air as he could, the feeling of coming out of the water after swimming really long under the surface hitting him with the violence of a truck. He blinked, realizing with embarrassment that he was laying on the linoleum floor against a wall, and registered the hand that was next to his face.

“Is everything alright?” Asked the stranger, oversweet honey disgustingly dripping from every single one of his intonations. Still livid from his dizzy spell, gulping his saliva with difficulty, he grunted an answer and feebly grabbed the hand, uneasily getting up. His eyes met the face of his savior and a shiver of discomfort ran through his body as the thin coroner’s lips stretched widely while the rest of his facial features didn’t move an inch, giving his smile an incredibly creepy vibe. No wonder why no one from his team wanted to come talk to this guy and pick up his report.

“Sorry for the fuss, Kabuto-san, I must be overworked. You surely know how important this case is.”

Kabuto slowly nodded and a strange light passed through the snake-like cracks he had for eyes, before inviting Naruto into his office, a couple of meters down the hall.

“I’m so glad you dropped by, Uzumaki-kun”, simpered the coroner between his teeth as he took a new pair of disposable gloves from his desk, Naruto still standing in the frame of the door, trying his best to disregard the strong smell of formalin that reign in the room and the cool temperature. “I suppose you’re here to see them?” He then asked his blond guest, his pale and greyish skin strangely reflecting the yellow electrical light of the ceiling.” They’ve been ready all afternoon, come with me.”

Naruto would have far preferred to just listen to the autopsy’s conclusion in the office and grab the report to leave this god forsaken place as fast as possible, but his rank couldn’t afford him to come across as rude or disrespectful, even to someone from a different Division, so his feet automatically marched into Kabuto’ steps, driving him into the adjacent room.

Tears started to form at the corners of his eyes as formalin saturated the atmosphere even more, and cold sweat slowly slid all along his spinal column when his eyes met the brightly lighted autopsy table standing in the middle of the morgue, occupied. Kabuto stopped right next to it and, a morbid smile on his face, extended Naruto a hand to invite him closer. 

“Don’t be shy” he told him, his high-pitched voice but a whisper, as if he was afraid to wake its patient. “Look how peaceful she is now.”

Naruto took a deep breath, and finally walked the distance separating him from the table, Kabuto’s eyes on him.

She did look peaceful, asleep almost. Her fair, bloodless face diffused a diaphanous aura under the projector and her blonde hair had been carefully brushed under her gentle skull. Her lips were still surprisingly red and, considering she was well into her fifties, her face barely worn any traces of the ravages of time. Cosmetic surgery? Probably.

A sheet modestly covered her body, which Naruto was thankful for. No need to pollute his mind with more gory images of the unfortunate victim.

“Did you find anything?” He asked Kabuto, his eyes lingering a bit longer on her serene features. He was glad that the horror that had precipitated her tragic demise hadn’t followed her in death. He knew some bodies could retain their last expression, giving away to the people handling them in the afterlife how much they had suffered before meeting their end.

Soundlessly, Kabuto moved across the table, facing Naruto from the other side, and delicately pressed a hand against the body’s cheek, lovingly caressing it. Naruto’s breathing intensified. He was feeling more and more ill at ease and a subtle nausea was starting to dig its claws around his stomach. _No, not here, not now_ , he commanded himself.

“She was beautiful, wasn’t she?” Asked Kabuto, rhetorically. His bony fingers finally left her poor face alone and his posture switched to a more professional one as he started turning around to reach the other side of the room, where the wall of frozen compartments containing the bodies currently under the responsibility of the precinct stood. He opened one of them and, with a visible effort, pulled its heavy drawer out, revealing the body of Katō Dan, Senju Tsunade’s life partner.

“The man died fast, that’s one sure thing”, started Kabuto as he signaled Naruto to get closer, showing him different lacerations on the throat and chest of the man. “The killer knew exactly where to hit and he sliced his carotid artery with great precision -the poor thing didn’t stand a chance. He died from blood loss in probably less than two minutes and with his sustained injuries, he was clearly unable to defend himself, which is corroborated by the absence of defensive wounds.”

Leaving the drawer opened, he walked back to the table, Naruto following suit. “For her however, that’s another story…”

Naruto instinctively took a step back when Kabuto abruptly removed the sheet covering Tsunade, revealing a gaping hole where her torso should have been. Her skin had been peeled and pushed to the sides of the chest like for a banana and her thoracic cage emptied, leaving her frail carcass hollowed. South, Kabuto had already consciously folded her guts back inside of her, letting them idly drool inside the empty cavity. Naruto thought he was going to puke.

“He manifestly choked her”, indicated Kabuto as he pinpointed Naruto the discolored skin of her throat, “Not enough to kill her but still sufficient to overpower her. Then, he sliced open her lower abdomen while she was still alive, and abandoned her to die.” Kabuto turned his head to look at Naruto behind him, still frozen, his eyes widely opened as he contemplated the body with an expression of utter horror. The coroner chuckled.

“Don’t you worry, I’ll make sure to get her decent again before handing her back to the family”, he casually mentioned, a sick smirk on his face. The world around Naruto started to wobble and as gravity changed its center, he felt his legs giving up. Kabuto swiftly caught him before his knees met the ground, his light laughter hurting Naruto’s ears like a jackhammer.

“Hang in there, buddy” hissed the coroner as he helped Naruto get back on his feet. 

“Could we wrap this up, please?” Croaked Naruto, too shaken to even be ashamed of the situation. He needed to get out of this place. And fast. Bile was burning his esophagus and he didn’t want his stomach to discharge its ramen inside the hollowed chest cavity of Tsunade. Kabuto nodded his head, his hideous laugh filling the silence of the room once more.

“Sure, buddy, sure”, he said as he carefully covered up Tsunade’s body again. “I estimate Dan Katō’s time of death around 1:25 a.m., and hers about an hour later. With her collapsed windpipe and her abdominal injury, she couldn’t do much more than await for Death to come and greet her. Also, both their drug tests came back negative, and every wound was done by the same kind of sharp tool. A knife, by all means.”

Naruto’s head felt way too heavy for him, but he still managed to weakly nod at Kabuto.

“Everything is in the report, I’ll send in to your team straight after”, imparted the man as he walked back to Dan’s drawer, ready to put the body away. Naruto mumbled a quick “thank you” and hurriedly made a u-turn, aiming for the door as he frantically rubbed his eyes, relieved at the thought that this nightmare would be over soon. In a couple of minutes, he would be in the elevator, safe again.

“Oh, also, one last thing before you go…”

Kabuto’s unpleasantly sweet voice reached his ears and brought him to a halt, fear seizing his body at the idea of spending one moment more in the morgue. “Katō Dan’s back is covered with lacerations, inflicted post-mortem. They must have been in quite a rage, to be honest.”

Back inside the safe metal shaft of the elevator, Naruto took a long moment to regain composure. He knew that what he had just seen would fuel his night terrors for the months to come, but he had sacrificed too much to let the sight of a body get the best of his mind. He really needed to stay sharp if he wanted to have a shot at this case. Never, even in his wildest dreams, could have he hoped working on such a crime. He couldn’t fail them, he simply could not.

He finally managed to walk back to his office and told his colleagues about the information gathered by the forensic team but, behind the smiley and casual attitude he displayed, the awful sensation that had seized him downstairs in the morgue stayed with him that day, long into the night. Maybe that was the reason why when, around 11 p.m., when he took the elevator once again to finally leave the precinct and head home for a short nap and a shower, he didn’t notice the woman with the long dip-dyed green hair that briefly got in with him for a couple of floors, texting on a phone that had yet to be invented. 

*

  
Now that the Minority Report unit had delivered SUNA -and as they waited for people like Sarutobi Konohamaru and his squad to give them feedbacks for an hypothetical update and implementation on a municipality level-, they had decided to tackle the other side of the coin: providing Inspectors with a technology that could see and make better connections between a case’s elements, crosscheck a humongous amount of data of various nature and eventually, bring them the key to their mystery on a silver plate. Something that, if they succeeded, would make crime analysts like Hinata pretty much outdated. 

On second thoughts, it was probably better not to think too hard about it.

Engrossed in the cold case report she was reading, Hinata had yet to notice that the sun had vanished, heavy darkness imbued with silence wrapping Kiba and her as they had kept working long after Kurenai and Shino’s departure.

For Kiba’s friend had been so helpful with the creation and launch of SUNA, the team had decided to name their new pet project after him and Kiba, Kurenai and herself had spent the entire past week going through old, unsolved cases to elect the best-suited one to feed KONOHA, so that machine learning could work its magic.

As a Crime analyst, navigating large quantities of data to provide strategic, statistical and investigative support to police forces was Hinata’s bread and butter, and the idea of picking up a cold case to dissect for Shino’s latest newborn thrilled her to the highest degree, which explained why she had naturally decided to keep on working her way through the gargantuan amount of report boxes that piled up behind their superior’s desk.

When going through a massive amount of files and cases, Kiba and Hinata had their system; they would draw their chairs closer and sit back to back to feel the soothing warmth of one another, giving the other one a head bump from time to time when they thought they had stumbled across something interesting, Akamaru patiently laying under their chairs, his tail or nose gently brushing across a leg once in a while.

No matter how tedious this kind of task could prove to be, Hinata cherished such moments for they made her feel part of a family more than a team. All they were currently missing was Shino’s characteristic typing sounds, and it would be perfect. 

Black lines came one after the other before her eyes as her brain scanned and “guessed” more than read the words written on the thin sheet of paper, sending to her conscious mind only the most relevant pieces of information. 

“The lease on the house had been terminated”.  
“All bank accounts had been closed”.   
“The children's school received a final payment settlement”.   
“Tomoko’s employer was informed that she was suffering from gastroenteritis and then that she was moving to South Korea”.   
“A message was placed on their letter box: ‘Please return all correspondence to the sender. Thank you’”. 

“The house had been completely emptied”. “Rifle bullets were purchased on March 12”. “Shinjiro, the oldest child, leaves the high school where he was studying and does not turn up at the shop where he worked and was due to go to pick up his monthly wages. His boss is surprised by this, stating that Shinjiro always came to collect his wages on the first day of the month”. “The father was seen ‘shoving large, shapeless and heavy dark bags in the trunk of the family car”.

“Mei and Seiji do not turn up at their school, ‘due to illness’”. “Mei and Seiji’s friends become concerned when they are unable to reach them”. “During the week, neighbors heard the family dogs howling for two consecutive nights and then never heard them again”. 

“Investigators believe that Ito Satoshi murdered his wife and three of his children on the night of 3 to 4 April, then murdered his son Shinjiro on the evening of 5 April”. “Mei and Seiji’'s school receives a letter signed by Satoshi, stating that Mei and Seiji will be leaving the school and the family will be moving to South Korea due to ‘urgent professional changes’". “The headmaster is unable to reach the family by telephone”. 

“Satoshi withdraws ¥4,000 from an ATM in Kitakami”.

“Satoshi sleeps at a budget hotel in Aomori, where he is captured on film by a surveillance camera – the last known sighting of him”.  
“Satoshi checks out of the hotel, abandoning his car there”.

Hinata was used to reading a ton of squalid details about the worst humans were capable of, but for some reason, tonight, this file... It was too much for her to handle. The father, Satoshi, had set off, leaving behind a house with the corpses of both the family dogs and his youngest twins buried in the backyard, as well as a car filled with three other family members in the trunk of his car in the parking lot of a shady hotel. Someone had shot them all in the head with a rifle, the pellets tearing to shreds flesh and bone alike. She turned to the next page and a close-up of a rotting crushed skull, brains trickling down, made her drop the report, feeling sick to her core. She let out a deep sigh and started to massage her temples, a light dizziness gaining her.

“Hey, what’s wrong behind?” She heard Kiba inquire as she closed her eyes and tried to erase the mental image that was forming in her head. She didn’t answer and that must have alarmed him, as he quickly got up and kneeled by her side, his hand gently stroking her arm up and down.

“Hey there, are you okay?”, he wondered, worried. Hinata opened her eyes again and weakly smiled at him.

“Yes, I just may have overdone it lately, that’s it.”

Kiba smirked back at her. He got up and pulled her arm to make her leave her chair, before wrapping her with his warmth. Taken aback by this unexpected demonstration of affection, Hinata stiffen a second, before chuckling lightly and hugging her partner back.

Kiba smelt like the comfort of a comfy couch and an oversized blanket on a winter’s day, and she shamelessly indulged in their hug. Unlike him who had a girlfriend, or Kurenai who had a daughter, she lived by herself and avoided her family as much as possible. Most of the friends she had made in college were now strangers to her and before that, she used to be timid to such an extreme that she didn’t really have anyone, so moments of shared contact with another human being had been cruelly rare lately.

Maybe it was the emptiness of her life, or just the tiredness, but without a warning, Hinata suddenly broke down into a sobbing less against Kiba’s chest

“I’m-I’m so sorry”, she stammered with a voice choked by emotions, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I was just reading about this case and…”

“Yo, Hinata, it’s fine, don’t apologize”, ordered her Kiba while squeezing her even harder. Akamaru, trained for this exact kind of scenario, had gotten on his two bottom legs and was seemingly hugging her as well, his head pressing against her bottoms. They remained like that for a moment, until the crying had dried out, Hinata feeling exhausted and washed out.

“I’m so sorry for this”, she croaked again, blush coloring her cheeks. Kiba snickered slightly before separating from her, a severe eye examining Hinata’s reddened face.

“You don’t have to feel bad about it”, he comforted her as he assessed her current mental state, “You can’t even imagine how many breakdowns I used to have, even after getting Akamaru. It’s alright.” 

Hinata looked at her feet sheepishly, unable to face her colleague out of shame, and slowly nodded her head. A shiver shook her body, and Kiba’s tutted her before taking off his sweater and passing it around her bare shoulders. Surprised, Hinata squeaked. Kiba grinned largely at her, and zipped the clothing up, literally restraining Hinata’s arms as she hadn’t passed on the sleeves. 

“What about I take Akamaru for a little walk around the block and get us something to eat at the supermarket?” He suggested as he patted her shoulders, their eyes locked together. Beyond mortified and embarrassed by the situation, Hinata agreed, eager to get some alone time to calm herself down. 

“What about your sweater?” She asked as he gathered his stuff, Akamaru immediately picking on where his master was taking him.

“I’m sure Tamaki would be okay with me lending it to you for twenty minutes” he sneered, before putting on his worn out jacket. “Come on, Akamaru!” And with an enthusiastic bark, the pair exited the room, leaving Hinata floating by herself in a dirty sweater way too big for her frame.

She managed to get her arms in the sleeves and then dropped into her seat again, letting herself melt into a pool of goo, shoulders relaxed, arms dangling and head hanging back, her heartbeat finally stabilizing. She filled her lungs with the comforting, masculine scent of Kiba, and tried to release the tension built up in her muscles, in vain.

It was completely dark outside. She gave a quick look at her phone. 10:43 p.m..

She probably just needed a break. They had been working non-stop lately, barely ever going home, and the seedy cases they were reviewing for KONOHA had surely gotten to her head. All she needed was some good rest. 

_And probably some good old action, to be honest._

She sighed and looked around her purposeless, unable to convince herself to resume her reading. Kiba would be back soon with some food anyway, so starting a new task now was futile. She grabbed the report and slammed it inside one of her drawers -out of sight, out of mind. Deciding that she needed to visit the restroom, at least to wash up the sticky layer of dry sweat and tears on her face, she then adventured herself in the empty corridor of the sixth floor, abandoned at such an ungodly hour by most of its daytime occupants. She stopped level in front of the bathroom as she noticed the cleaning cart at the door and, feeling tired and defeated, rerouted herself towards the third floor one, the ones before being always too dirty to her liking.

As she got out of the toilets, she walked to the sink to wash her hands, her pasty reflection scrutinizing her in the mirror. She washed her hands and examined herself in the tainted glass closer.

As a teenager, her long, thick, silky blue hair had been her most prideful and priced physical attribute. For the longest time, her father had refused to let her grow it, pretexting how difficult it was to maintain, and had insisted on keeping it short. Then, when she had gotten into middle school and had been deemed old enough to take care of her own body herself, she had finally been granted the privilege to choose her haircut herself. 

Right now however, her once luxurious mane looked dull to her, flat even, as the slightly creasy mass was tied down against her neck into a low ponytail that disappeared into Kiba’s sweater after the collar. The only remembrance of its original color was the dark blue roots that shyly reared their head before fading into a washed-up green coloration she had done herself a couple of months ago. Her brows furrowed. The first time she had dyed them, it was in the bathroom sink of a gas station, after a particular bad night of binge-drinking and disgusting alley sex with some stranger, which had made her feel sick to her core. The guy had gripped her hair hard the whole encounter while quite forcefully stuffing himself in her mouth, pressing himself deeply, her scalp almost hurting from his harsh grasp, commenting over and over what nice locks she got there. Later, after he had left, spent, she had cleaned herself up, the fog clouding her mind altering her better judgment, and had started to meander the empty streets of Shibuya. The image of her in a lightless window shop, shit-faced, dishevelled, smeared mascara and lipstick, had her stop in shock. Behind her, his glare had crossed paths with her emptied one, the disapproving look she had tried so hard to escape from the entire night growing harder as he detailed her current state.

_Look at you Hime… What is wrong with you?_

She had suddenly felt like someone had plunged their hand in her chest to tear off her heart, making her generously spread the content of her stomach onto the cold glass, the sidewalk and her boots, the acidic puke burning her throat and leaving an awful after-taste on her tongue. 

As she then frantically went through the capillary product section of the first konbini she had rushed in, she first considered cutting her hair altogether. She could still feel the pull, and it sickened her. _Beautiful hair_. Instead, she had grabbed bleach and dye and, fifteen minutes later, she was laying on the dirty floor of a sordid restroom, product all over her head, on the brink of passing out, the putrid smell of ammonia going to her head.

Hinata breathed out slowly in front of the precinct mirror, her hands squeezing the whitish porcelain of the sink. Behind her, his judging eyes burnt like lasers.

_You’re tired. You should go home. You should take care of your body._

She looked at him for a second, before hastily opening the tap and splashing water all over the glass in front of her to make him go away. He wasn’t even alive anymore, it was all in her head. _All in your head_ , she repeated to herself, as if she was trying to convince someone. She contemplated a drop slowly slid down the smooth surface, racing its doppelganger on the other side of the mirror, before crashing onto the hard surface of the sink. Inside her skull, a sudden buzzing vibration started, like a group of bees growing bigger and bigger. She grabbed her head with both hands, the sensation unnerving her. It felt insufferable.

“Leave me alone!” She yelled at the mirror before escaping the oppressing space, bursting into the corridor, seeking for the elevator.

She wasn’t feeling good. She wasn’t feeling good _at all_. Behind her, his imaginary steps echoed in the hallway. She wouldn’t make it to the elevator before him, she knew it. The buzz in her head accentuated and the long hall distorted before her eyes, walls slowly drawing closer then backing away again like a breathing, living being. The lines and perspective stretched, moving slowly in front of her as a loud ringing hit her ears, driving her into the wall.

“Leave me in peace!” She screamed again, her arm defensively swinging in the air, trying to push aside an invisible assailant. It took her all of her strength to limp toward the elevator and press the call button, the unbearable tinnitus in her ears making her lose all sense of balance and stability. She felt tears of fear forming at the corners of her eyes as she saw the silhouette from the mirror getting closer to her, swells of milling darknesses giving it consistency. She collapsed against the metal doors, trapped, and whined as the boneless figure extended a hand toward her face.

_You look so pretty with those long blue hair, do you know it?_

The eerie shadow fingers almost touched her skin and she shut her eyes close, tensing up at the imminent contact, when the doors behind her finally opened. She felt on the hard, dusty floor, her mouth and eyes wide open as she resurfaced in the real world.

“Wow, are you ok??”

To add to her misery, the lift was already occupied and she stupidly looked around her, disoriented by her sudden change of scenery and position.

“Let me help you”, said the stranger as they kneeled by her side, dropping a box of evidence and grabbing her like a toddler under the armpits to put her back on her feet. Dumbfounded by the bold move, Hinata stuttered as she turned around to meet them, her face looking positively dreadful.

“Hum, sorry, I… I think I’m just tired, I need to rest, really, that’s-”

And it felt like her mind short-circuited itself.

He must have been younger than her. He had to. He was tall, really tall, almost towering above her, forcing her to raise her face to glance at his facial features. She swallowed with difficulty.

His ocean eyes examined her with a hint of concern and anxiety, as if he was afraid she would faint or something, and Hinata blushed hard at the thought of her less than engaging appearance.

“Where are you going?” He asked with authority, acting like he was older than her. “Let me walk you back there.”

Her head ducked between her shoulders and she bit her lower lips, too bashful to hold his burning stare.

“Sixth floor, but really, there is no need to, I’m fine”, she tried to protest, but her voice sounded weak and hollow, even to her.

He moved to pick up his box from the floor and while balancing it, pressed with his elbow on the “6” button. Hinata caught a glimpse of the personnel badge he wore around his neck.  
_Uzumaki Naruto._

The shaft shivered a little as she felt them moving up and her shoulders stooped, her eyes focused on her shoes. The last thing she wanted was some cute intern to see her be prey to imaginary nightmares. 

The characteristic “ding” of the elevator resonated in the cabin and when she saw him begin to move to escort her, she rushed outside with a “No need to accompany me!” before meeting the cold, hard surface of the wooden door of a nearby office, relieved to notice the boy had not followed her. She closed her eyes and pressed her back neck against it, the chilling sensation soothing her nerves as she internally fulminated, scolding herself for being so weak.

“Hinata, are you feeling alright? Your face is really red! Did something happen to you?”

Kiba and Akamaru were back from their late stroll, the former holding a plastic bag from which curls of steam rose in the air, suspicion and concern mixing on his face. Hinata feebly nodded her head, desperate puppy eyes meeting with Kiba’s as he approached her and put his arm under her armpits to pull her closer and help her walk back to their office.

“It’s nothing, really”, she frailly let out as she basically let her poor colleague carry her to her chair.

“You’re really overworking yourself”, he commented behind his teeth, which made Hinata feel even more guilty than she already did.

“I”m going to call Tamaki and we’re driving you home, ok? And I don’t even want to hear a single protest” notified Kiba as he carefully dropped her. Hinata remained silent. The last hour had been just too much for her to even try to.

“Thank you, Kiba”, she managed to whisper as Akamaru slipped his head on her knees to comfort her, his master unboxing their dinner. He turned around and lovingly stroked her head, a sad smile on his lips.

“Anything for a friend”, he murmured, and Hinata rested her head against his belly, her hand petting Akamaru, the smell of their food slowly invading the safe space of their office, their energy protecting her from his relentless shadow.

  
*

  
“Okay, let me take you to your offi…” 

Naruto dropped dead in the middle of his sentence and looked around him, his jaw hanging wide open.

He was alone in the empty corridor and a quick eye-check of the elevator shaft taught him that she wasn’t in there either. He blinked, astonished, and frantically turned around, trying to catch any clue that could indicate where she had gone. After all, she hadn’t vanished, right?

The elevator signaled that it was going to close its doors again and he rushed back inside, pressing for the first basement, still unsure about what had just happened.

Meh, not every life mystery had to be solved.

By the time he had reached the artificially lighted corridors of the CSI division, expertly navigating to the office of Nara Shikamaru and Yamanaka Ino, Naruto had already forgotten about this bizarre encounter.

“Hey guys!” He grinned widely as he entered the tiny room, barely big enough to contain both technicians’ desks, chairs and their filing cabinets. “What’s up?”

“Why so loud” complained Shikamaru as he lazily covered his mouth to hide a sigh, Naruto unceremoniously dropping his bottoms on the goateed man’s desk. Shikamaru tutted as he playfully tried to oust the invader with a hit of a rolled-up report. 

“You seem in quite a good mood for someone basically waiting for a third murder to happen”, noticed Ino with a playful smile from the other side of the office. Naruto shrugged and dropped his evidence box on a pile of duty reports next to him. At the mention of the current state of his investigation, he had abruptly lost his smile, promptly turning it into a preoccupied pout.

Six days had passed since they had found the latest victims of the Rinnegan killer, and they were still as close to catching him as they were on their first day. They had interviewed the entire block, reviewed countless hours of any security camera recording they could get their hands on, screened the unfathomable number of so-called tips received by the emergency hotline specially set up for them -in vain. The man was a ghost, a shadow that walked the night and vanished with the dawn of day, his misdid accomplished.

Ino must have felt like she had pushed his buttons a bit too hard, for she gave him a sorry look before suddenly leaning over her desk, a malicious fire burning in her eyes.

“Uzumaki-chan, what if I told you I had some good news for you?” She innocently teased him, her lips repressing a smirk. Naruto stopped pouting immediately and straightened on Shikamaru’s desk, intrigued.

“What if I told you”, she repeated, her hand grabbing a file on her desk and waving it at him, “that the DNA results are just in, and that I have something for you and your team?” 

“No way!” Naruto stood up eagerly, his childish excitement causing both the technicians to smile. “Did you find something?” Ino nodded her head with a sly grin. “And? What does it say?” Pressed Naruto as he rushed over to her desk, both hands on the hard wood supporting his weight, his face only centimeters away from Ino’s. She pushed the report into Naruto’s face for him to back off and cleared her throat.

“We collected a lot of DNA on the crime scene, almost exclusively belonging to the victims or their housekeeper, but…” She fished a page out of the folder and spread it on the table in front of Naruto. The overexposed close-up picture of a short body hair laying on what looked like a bloody carpet took most of the sheet, with some scientific gibberish under it. “We did find a hair right next to the female victim, and its DNA doesn’t match anyone’s.”

Naruto blinked, disappointed. He was expecting something a little more case-shattering. “So, it’s his?” Ino nodded again.

“That’s almost certain. The only thing is that the DNA wasn’t in any of our databases, so there is no way to know who it belongs to. But, if you manage to identify a suspect, you can cross their DNA with this one, and that’s already something.” 

He hardly could believe it. His frown disappeared and he profusely thanked Ino for the news, perked up. Sure, they hadn’t identified him yet, but this was definitely something, an advantage no team before them had managed to get. Now, it was time for them to step into action and make good use of the ace they had been dealt. 

“How come you didn’t find any fingerprints when she got us a freaking hair, hum?” He teased Shikamaru as he stood back up, pulling away from his blonde and perky colleague. The other guy grunted back at him, arguing that the killer was wearing leather gloves.

“However, I heard Choji confirming earlier on that the blood used by the killer to draw the symbol on the wall was Senju’s one.”

“That sick bastard”, snorted Naruto, feeling the anger steam up inside of him. The memory of Tsunade’s empty body invited itself in his mind and he cringed internally, shaking his head in an effort to get rid of the uncomfortable vision.

When Naruto finally took his leave from them, he was feeling slightly reinvigorated by the news and had almost forgotten that the third murder was suppose to happen in the upcoming hours. “I’ll email you the report!” Yelled at him Ino from her office as he walked away, raising his box in the air to signal her his agreement before taking the direction of the archives to give it back on his way to his team’s office, five floors upstairs.

“Uzumaki-kun!” Welcomed him Sakura to their shared desk, her tired features stretching into a smile, “CSI just sent us a report, they have found…”

“I know already, I was with them”, smiled back Naruto as he sat down across the table from her and next to a smoking Sasuke who was sporting a sullen look on his face. The raven-haired Assistant Inspector had been looking unusually preoccupied by something lately, which probably was the reason why Sakura hadn’t complained about his cigarette yet.

Naruto exchanged a brief stare with his female coworker, and she decided to speak out, hesitant.

“Sasuke-san?” She asked, her voice trembling in the semi-darkness of the open space. No reaction. “Sasuke-san? Is everything alright?”

The dark man stood still a moment longer, the ashes of his cigarette slowly crumbling onto his white shirt, but he didn’t seem to care.

“It does not make sense”, he finally grunted, his eyes still lost in the beyond. Naruto and Sakura both raised an eyebrow, and Sasuke finally grabbed his butt to crush it on the same old _Police Magazine_ , now covered with five days of disgusting habits. His elbow on the table, his face resting on his clenched fist, he finally looked at them.

“The first time around, he murders the parents of a family with a child as well a mother whose husband was momentarily away on a business trip”, he started to dissect, his teammates unsure of what was going on in this unfathomable brain of his. “Then, during the second wave, he kills a childless married couple, and a childless married woman who happened to be alone at home that night. Question number one: why switch from people with children to childless ones?”

_Hum._

Naruto’s eyebrows furrowed as he tried to formulate a logical hypothesis to his colleague’s relevant interrogation. Sakura stared at the ceiling a minute, her eyes drawing the cracks in the paint, before diving back down at Sasuke.

“Maybe he had become a father in between? After all, a lot can happen in eleven years, so it wouldn’t be that improbable to theorize that he had had a child of his own. Maybe that changed him?”

“Or maybe he lost a parent himself, and couldn’t bear to make an orphan of someone else?” Suggested Naruto, stimulated by Sakura’s train of thought.

Sasuke shook his head, unconvinced.

“But then, why Dan and Tsunade? They weren’t even legally married. Also,” and he dropped back against the back of his work chair, sinking deep in it, sourer than ever, “Why such an age difference between the victims? The Namikaze were in their early thirties, like Kohari. Then, the Uchihas and Nonō were in their forties, and now the last couple is in their fifties. That doesn’t make any sense.”

Sakura breathed out loudly. “Maybe he’s aging with his victims? Maybe he was in his thirties when he began and now, he’s in his fifties, who knows?”

“Nay, he’s younger than that”, butted in Naruto with an aplomb that stunned both his teammates.

“And how would you know?” Inquired Sasuke, his suspicious glare piercing through the young Sargeant. Naruto’s ears reddened immediately and his eyes ran away from the attention to artificially fix the edge of his desk, an abashed expression on his face. 

“Just an intuition”, he grumbled as he grabbed a random report that was laying there and pretended to start reading it in hopes of discouraging them to push the matter further. 

“He could be an omnivore”, offered to his relief Sakura, effectively switching subjects. Sasuke rolled her eyes at her. 

The Rinnegan killer’s pattern had bothered Naruto countless times before already, however, he had never shared any of his theories with his partners. Each cycle, the Rinnegan killer killed in a different ward of Tokyo, always a couple followed by a single woman, but other than that, there were little similarities between the waves. Then never took place at the same time of the year, but did always start on the 21st; the victims’ profiles differed in terms of physical characteristics, but he always murdered one man and two women. It was like everything that wasn’t his core, precise plan, was unimportant, and Naruto wondered the kind of man the killer saw every morning in the mirror. 

They had gotten back to work and had been all very studious for a while when, after she had taken out of her pocket her phone to check on something, Sakura informed them with a weirdly hollowed voice of the time: “It’s 2:43 a.m..”

The air in the room stood still, heavy, thick, dry around them, full of implicit implications. The third murder had probably already happened, they all thought as they focused back on their work again, their guts contracting painfully.

Just like Sasuke, Naruto did not concur with Sakura’s theory of an omnivore killer. To him, the murders were executed with too much precision and finesse to be the result of an unplanned action; he had to be selecting his victim beforehand to achieve such a perfect _coup_ each time around. But why change age, body types or even socioeconomic class? Could it be a different killer altogether every cycle, with the previous one training the newest member, like for some kind of sick satanic ritual? Never had he voiced this theory aloud and besides, he knew that the evidence pointed to the same person, but still. To his young and inexperienced brain, this looked like the most plausible scenario. 

He wasn’t exactly sure how he had gotten there, but all of sudden, Naruto found himself back in Kabuto’s morgue, alone. To his relief, the smell of formalin had left the air but the place retained its creepiness nonetheless and he anxiously inspected his surroundings, on the lookout for the door. Stupor made way for terror as he realized that all four walls around him were devoid of doors and windows, effectively trapping him inside the seedy laboratory. His eyes scanned the room: apart from the wall of cold drawers and nude metal cabinets everywhere, probably there to stock the autopsy material, there was nothing that could prove of any help. Desperate, he turned to the center of the room, where the autopsy table awaited. Occupied.

Immobile, the crude and violent light above her making her skin look even paler, Tsunade was laying down, her face turned towards him, her empty orbits observing his every move.

Naruto started panting and instinctively took a step back, until his back painfully hit the wall. On the table, Tsunade cast the sheet that covered her dissected body away and slowly, uneasily, sat down, the sides of her open chest skin sagging as she wheezed. Much to Naruto’s horror, she let her body slide from the table and heavily fell on her feet, her guts starting to spill out from her opened torso. With one hand, she tried to tuck them back inside as much as she could, unsuccessfully. Distraught by her failure, her dead eyes desperately turned to him for help, her other hand reaching in the air for him.

“Help...me…” Wailed the woman as she took a step in his direction, her large intestine escaping her grip and falling on the floor with a viscous “pop”. Naruto pressed his back even further against the wall.

“Help me…” She repeated, taking a second step. More guts fell, hanging between her legs, leaving behind her a slimy and bloody trail. Naruto’s breathing was so erratic that he thought he was going to pass out from hyperventilation.

“Help me!” Finally shrieked the woman, letting all of her guts hit the floor as she suddenly rushed towards a terrified Naruto, his back pushing against the wall so much it was hurting.

_Hum, what about milk? Would milk be okay?_

He brutally emerged from the darkness and raised his head back up in one go, the sheet of paper he had fallen asleep on briefly sticking to his cheek before falling back on the table. Sakura, whose hand was laying on his shoulder, jerked back, startled by his violent reaction. Glassy eyes glanced around the empty office, the first rays of the timidly rising sun shining through the window.

“Uzumaki-kun”, she murmured, “They found another body.”

Still quite disoriented, Naruto nodded his head and got up, his mind readying itself for the next tragedy that awaited their team.

Uchiha Sasuke was furious. The young Assistant Inspector was boiling on the inside, feelings of rage, inadequacy and powerlessness mixing tumultuously in his heart. 

He refused to believe Sakura’ suggestion of an omnivore killer that had no specific pattern in his victimology, no matter how hard the evidence at hand were trying to back it up. He intimately believed that the pattern was only extremely difficult to discern. Up to him to find it, now.

The cigarette craving had him frantically scratching his left upper arm as he looked away from the corpse, too upset by their crime scene. It didn’t make any sense to him. Frustrated, he left his crouching position and walked around the room, not paying attention to what Kakashi was saying -not that he cared. Three victims -one man, two women- in 1986 in Taitō ward, in their thirties. Three victims -one man, two women- in 1997 in Chiyoda ward, in their forties. And now, three victims in 2008 in Chūō-ku. Except this time, the third one was a man. Oh, and also, they were not in the same age group.

It was like the Rinnegan killer was doing it on purpose, taunting the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, challenging them, challenging _him_ personally to come and find him. The murder had happened in the small living area of this upscale one-bedroom apartment. What the victim was doing before, Sasuke wasn’t too sure, but he was still fully dressed up in everyday clothes, so he was probably still up when Death had knocked on his door. The place was spotless -apart from the mess produced by the killing, obviously-, everything being where it should be, except in two places. 

In the kitchen sink, four glasses were waiting to be washed, one of which had what appeared like woman’s lipstick on it. Two other glasses, one half empty and the other full with a transparent liquid that must have been water, were sitting on the kotatsu near the couch in one corner of the room. Either their victim liked to change glasses a lot or he had had company before ending like this.

Sweating under his full white overalls, Sasuke took the direction of the small bedroom. The room was nothing special: a desk with its studying material rigorously displayed on, a built-in closet impeccably organized, a drawer and some cupboards sporting some meticulously positioned framed and knick-knacks. Sasuke took a minute to examine the pictures that Ōtsutsuki Neji had chosen to surround himself with: on one, the victim was posing in its school uniform next to a younger school girl, shyly avoiding the camera. Next to it, the same duo was smiling at one another outside under a tree, a third girl next to them. On the drawer, they were both on a tennis court, sweating and red after a game but laughing. His girlfriend? His sister? On the nightstand, a portrait of the girl, posing at a piano, a pink blush coloring her cheeks as she stared at someone behind the camera, was laying there. 

His eyes traveled to the bed next to it, and they lingered on the creased duvet and the untapped pillows still molding somebody’s head, wrestling a frown from the Assistant Inspector. 

The entire apartment was precisely organized in a way all too familiar to Sasuke, the way that every child coming from money had been used to. Discipline, care, method: that was the image Ōtsutsuki Neji’ student flat reflected, and this carelessly made bed stood out in this asepticized environment. 

He turned to the two lab technicians that were busying themselves behind him in the room collecting evidence and hailed them.

“Make sure to examine the bed thoroughly”, he ordered them, his breath fogging the inside of his protection glasses, “That’s where the action happened.”

They both hummed their understanding and Sasuke found his way back to the living room, where his team was still discussing the crime and the corpse. He passed them, indifferent, and on his way out, he noticed another picture frame hanging in the genkan, this time of the victim with two other young people, a boy with a bowl cup and a girl with two side buns, all smiling to the camera.

The fresh late September air greeted him outside, cooling the layers of sweat that covered his face and neck. Policemen were trying to keep at a distance the army of journalists that had already found out about the crime and awaited a new piece of juicy gossip, so he walked down a dozen of meters down the street to avoid the crowd, noticing not far ahead a familiar face.

Her skin red, her eyes puffed from the profusely sobbing, he recognized the young girl from the pictures, dressed in a pretty plain pleated skirt and modest top way too big for her petite frame, a silk scarf wrapped around her neck. He decided to head for her, flashing his badge to the woman in uniform that guarded her. The girl, too busy crying, didn’t even acknowledge his presence. Without a word, Sasuke took out of his back pocket a squashed packet of SevenStars and a lighter, and offered one to the girl, earning himself shocked looks from both women.

“She’s only seventeen!” Hissed the Police woman, scandalized by his attitude. Sasuke rebuffed her with a shrug. 

“I was younger than her when I started”, he casually answered, offering the girl a cigarette again. A proud and fierce expression seized her features and she shook her head, silent tears continuously running down her cheeks as she ostensibly turned away from him to resume her crying.

Sasuke smirked and lighted a cigarette, purposefully blowing his smoke in the direction of the child.

“Who’s that?” He quizzed the Police woman, ignoring her disapproving glare.

“Ōtsutsuki Hinata” she explained, reluctantly. “Ōtsutsuki Neji’s cousin. She found the body.”

Sasuke nodded. “And what are you two doing on the sidewalk like two street workers?”

Both women were now openly giving him hateful looks, but fortunately for him, he was still higher in the hierarchy, so the other one forced herself to give him an answer.

“Waiting for her legal guardian to join us before taking her to the precinct for interrogation.”

Sasuke took another deep puff.

“And why aren’t you ladies waiting inside the secured hall of the building?”

The Ōtsutsuki girl gave him a haughty sniff. “Because that’s where his body is.” She paused, emotion invading her throat, and she started sobbing again. “That’s where his body is”, she repeated, tears shaking her body and the Police woman wrapped a sympathetic arm around her shoulders.

Sasuke squinted and kept an eye on the girl, his sixth sense tingling him. Would he have been anyone else than himself, he could have ruled this as meaningless paranoia induced by a lack of sleep… If not for the crying high schooler to instinctively raise her hand to her neck, hidden by the piece of fabric. 

“Nice scarf”, he commented, exhaling the very last puff of his cigarette. The woman gave him a hostile look, and he deemed it wiser to leave it like this for now, unless he wanted to be torn to pieces by some hysterical female subaltern. Imperturbable, he vaguely bid them farewell before expertly throwing his butt on the young girl, the darkened filter ricocheting on her arm. She shrieked of surprise and he turned around, satisfied. He didn’t feel furious anymore.

It was already well past noon when Naruto and his team had finally gotten back to the precinct after half a day in the small student apartment of Ōtsutsuki Neji, the newest victim of the Rinnegan killer. Just like Katō Dan and every male victim before him, he had been stabbed multiple times and left to die in a pool of his own blood under the threatening symbol of his attacker, Kabuto having estimated his time of death between midnight and 2 a.m.. No one in their team could comprehend why the killer had suddenly chosen to deviate from what they had thought was his pre-established pattern, and Naruto could practically feel Sasuke’s brain stirring for an answer from the other side of the conference room where the team had gathered for a quick battle plan.

“Unlike with the last murders, the victim’s cousin as well as a good friend of his had dropped by his place last night, and again in the morning”, notified them Kakashi as he reread his preliminary notes, his eyes exhausted. “The girl that found the body, Ōtsutsuki Hinata, is already here with both her father and a lawyer, so we’re going to proceed with her interview straight away. We requested the other girl’s presence as well, and she promised to arrive as soon as possible, so we should be expecting her any minute now.” He then detached his glare from his tiny notebook and pointed at Naruto with his chin.

“Uzumaki-kun, I want you to lead Ōtsutsuki Hinata’s interrogation”, he announced casually. “Uchiha-kun, you’ll second him from the control room. Haruno-kun, we’ll get ready together for the friend’s questioning and you’ll take the lead once she’ll be there. All clear?”

Naruto felt like his jaw had unhooked. Lead an interrogation, him? Despite having practiced it at the Police Academy with his classmates, despite having assisted both Sasuke and Sakura numerous times before and no later than this very week, Naruto had never led an _actual_ interrogation in his life.

Leading an interrogation was a big thing, a delicate exercise of balance and power during which the officer had to prove himself capable of instantly grasping his interlocutor’s psyche and read every micro sign capable of helping him interprete the other's motivations: if they were lying, hiding something, afraid… As well as constantly readapting his posture, speech, and way to tackle the interviewee to determine the most efficient path to the truth.

A titanic mental game of go or chess that Naruto had never played under real conditions.

“Ha… Hatake-keibu!” Protested Naruto, stammering, “Are you sure about your decision? I’m only a Sergeant, wouldn’t it be wiser to let Uchiha-san lead the interview? I mean-”

Kakashi repositioned his mask which had slipped under his nose during his previous tirade. 

“Uzumaki-kun”, he interrupted Naruto with a kind smile in his eyes, “I’m sure you’ll do just fine, don’t worry. Moreover, the girl is very young and seems quite shy and impressionable, so I’m afraid that someone less… engaging like Uchiha-kun -no offense, by the way-”

“None taken” answered Sasuke, unshakable.

“-would intimidate her. Nevertheless, the one I really want the interview of is that other friend anyway; she’s allegedly the last one to have seen Ōtsutsuki Neji alive, she may have seen something that could lead us to the killer. The Hinata girl discovered the corpse and called the cops straight away, I hardly believe that her testimony will be helpful.” 

Kakashi then slammed his notebook close and set his team into motion. Stress immediately overwhelmed Naruto. He was about to lead his first interview, in a murder case -the Rinnegan killer one, none the less. He really could not afford to screw this up. 

Bile built in his mouth.

“You’ll be just fine.”

The voice startled Naruto as he was contemplating the interrogation room from the adjacent control room, separated only by a big tinted window. His broody colleague, his eyebrows still deeply furrowed, stepped by his side, his hard stare locked on the room before them.

“You’re young and communicative, your first task will be to make her feel at ease to win her trust. Once she’ll be more relaxed, knock her down and the match will be over.”

Naruto raised a brow, sceptic. He wasn’t exactly sure about the “knocking her down” part, but to hear such a sentence coming from Sasuke almost felt like a praise or a piece of advice, making him twice as nervous to nail this interrogation now. Determined not to let his colleague down -nor to lose face in front of his most odious teammate-, he vigorously nodded his head, a renewed fire burning inside of him. Assertive, he turned around and took the direction of the interrogation room when again, the Uchiha hailed him.

“Uzumaki-kun”, he monotonously delivered, “Ask her about her neckerchief and her neck. I have an intuition about it.”

Naruto turned around and stared at his colleague, frowning. What did he mean by that?

“Just do it”, repeated the other man.

Naruto closed the door behind him, his mind trying to make sense of Sasuke’s command. Had he seen the witness before? If not, how did he know she was wearing a neckerchief? And what was wrong with her neck?

All these questions were churning around as he settled at the interrogation table, on the other side of the tainted mirror. Soon after, two Policemen escorted two middle-aged men inside, followed by a small and frail female figure.

“Please, take a seat”, invited Naruto with a voice he meant to be as engaging as possible, as Ōtsutsuki Hinata, her father and her lawyer sat down, the young girl facing directly Naruto. She hadn’t once raised her head or looked away from her shoes since crossing the threshold of the interrogation room. It was going to be hard.

Taking a deep breath, he relaxed his shoulders and jaw and entered the ring, ready for the fight.

“Thank you so much for agreeing to meeting with us, Ōtsutsuki-san”, he greeted her with a comforting tone. “I know today must have been incredibly grueling for you and… Well, I cannot even imagine how you must feel right now. So, thank you for taking the time and finding the strength to talk with me, ya know?”

The young girl, whose head was dropped in a submissive manner, vaguely hummed at him, her face still mostly hidden by a thick curtain of healthy indigo hair. Naruto quickly assessed the two men by her side: one especially, a severe expression on his face, long brown hair tied up into a low ponytail, was sporting a suit and a sports watch that together must have cost more than a life of his salary. The lawyer also looked well-dressed, though in a less ostensible manner than Hinata’s father, making it harder for Naruto to estimate his outfit’s price. 

As a matter of fact, once he considered her more carefully,, he noticed that her outfit -though quite unremarkable- was made out of pretty nice fabrics, and that both her earrings, necklace and bracelet were likely not silver but platinum. She probably went to a private school. Studied hard with tutors to get into the university of her dreams. Took part in various clubs after class. Would have never suspected that the little cocoon her family wealth had provided her with could be teared apart by the dreadful horrors of a reality that seemed to reserve its calamities only for others.

She was hermetic to the world around her, encapsulated in her mind and body, her eyes solely fixing her hands under the table, and Naruto wasn’t sure if he could manage to crack her open.

“Ōtsutsuki-san?” He tried again as he leaned a little over the table to create a sense of proximity with his witness, “My name is Uzumaki Naruto and I’m a Sergeant here, okay? But, ya know what?” He added with a sly smile as she shyly raised her face, her timid and extraordinary lavender eyes finally meeting his, “You can call me Naruto. What about that?” 

Her head retreated between her shoulders but she nodded anyway, pinching her lips into a thin line, neither of them breaking their shared glance.

“You can call me Hinata too, Naruto-san”, she expelled in a whisper. Naruto approved with a move of the head. 

“Great”, he answered, followed by a playful wink that turned her into a blushing mess and earned Naruto a killer look from her father. Deciding to ignore the two men, he leaned even more towards her, his hands crossed before him, and started to work through the interrogation’ standard procedure.

“Hinata-san, I know you hurt right now, and you’re going to hurt even more after we do this, but I need you to be strong and tell me what happened, okay? Do you think you can do that for me? For your cousin?”

The small girl closed her eyes tightly, the spasm of a sob crisping her face, and she inhaled painfully before opening her mouth.

“I-I…” she only managed to get out, a harrowing cry making its way through her throat. Her stone-like father, apathetic, patted her on the back without even moving the rest of his body or looking at his daughter. Naruto grabbed a box of tissue that had been brought to the table beforehand and offered her one, patiently waiting for her to recover and keep going.

“I went to his place this morning, like every other Sunday. We… We always meet up over there before heading to the tennis club where our family holds a membership and play a game together, before going to… Oh my…” She broke down in tears again. Naruto thought his heart was about to break. She looked so young and powerless, and he didn’t know what to do to make her feel better. Worst, he knew there was nothing that could be done to make her feel better.

“You are doing great, Hinata-san”, he encouraged her softly, and she stared at him again, an expression of deep despair in the well of her pupils. Naruto started to breathe out loudly with her, helping Hinata regain control of her own lungs, the shakes of her chest lessening with every full exhalation, until she was able to go on again.

She told him how, like every Sunday ever since her cousin had left the family home to live on his own in order to focus on his studies and become more independent, she had been dropped by her chauffeur in front of his building and gotten without any trouble in his apartment as she held a key. She had taken her shoes off in the genkan and, surprised to see that the lights of the living room were on when the sun was rising up, had walked in there to find a corpse under a bloody symbol. Out of shock, she told him, she had touched the body, shaking it slightly to wake him up, for he could not be dead. 

But Neji’s shoulder felt cold as ice, and it was only then that she had realized how much blood there was. The thick, coagulated sirup had stained her knees, her socks, her hands and she had instinctively backed away before breaking into a shriek, alerting a couple of neighbors that had helped her call the police, keeping her body company while waiting for them, her mind blacking out.

“And, what about last night?” Naruto then asked her as she took an umpteenth tissue to dry her red eyelids. “You told the first team that got there that you had seen him the night before and that he was alive, right?”

Sasuke was right. Something was wrong.

The young girl’s behaviour immediately changed. Her look hardened all of the sudden, her face turned off. Naruto could practically see the wall she was unexpectedly erecting between him and her, sending waves of panic through his entire body as he was losing her. Something was _very_ wrong.

“Hinata-san?” He asked, perplexed, as she dropped her head again, hiding most of her features away from his burning sight. Next to her, her father gave her a side-glance, but didn’t say anything.

“I went to his place in the middle of the afternoon to study with him.” Her tone had drastically changed. It was harsh, cold, assertive, nothing like the one she had used for the last twenty minutes or so, and it chilled Naruto to his core. “Around 10 p.m., I felt tired and, not wanting to disturb our chauffeur, I called a friend of mine to come and pick me up so I could go home. I was there by 10:45 p.m., my family can concur.”

Naruto gave a glance at her father who silently approved of her timetable. He bit the interior of his cheek, uncertain. She wasn’t telling him the whole story.

“Okay”, he continued, deciding that he shouldn’t probably be too confrontational about it, “And what’s the name of the said friend?” 

“Her name is Tenten.” 

“Was it just Tenten that came to pick you up? We’ll double-check everything ya know, so don’t omit any detail.”

“She was with a friend, Lee, when I called, but she came to pick me up alone”, conceded Hinata, her dark aura deploying around her like a shield. Naruto felt defeated. There was nothing else he could get out of her, and although he didn’t know if any of this was directly linked to the Rinnegan killer, something was wrong. He needed to find out what.

Sasuke’s last advice crossed his mind again, and his eyes jumped to the thin scarf she arbored around her neck. That was his last chance.

“Hinata-san, why do you keep your scarf inside? It’s pretty warm inside the Police station, don’t you think?”

She raised her head again, her eyes bulging out of their orbits. She jerked back, hitting the back of her chair with a smothered sound, her hand instinctively pressing against the soft fabric wrapped around her neck. 

Naruto wasn’t the only one altered by her behavior. Her father, who had remained stoic the entire interview, finally moved on his chair, tp face his daughter. 

“Hinata-san”, repeated Naruto, this time with all the firmness he could put into words, “Could you please remove this scarf for me?”

Hinata looked nothing like a shy and passive high schooler anymore. Lips drawn back in a grimace, she looked like a wounded animal at bay, her hands tightening protectively around the piece of clothing. Something was wrong.

“Hinata.”

The sound of her father’s voice -commanding, imperious- startled Naruto, who had yet to hear him say something. “Hinata, take off your scarf”, he ordered her, his presence clearly signaling her that he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Resigned, his daughter slowly, incredibly slowly, unwrapped the scarf, unveiling her delicate marble neck. 

It must have happened recently, less than 24 hours ago, according to the still reddish complexion of the two large hand-shaped bruises that clasped her throat. Someone had tried to suffocate her, that was certain.

“Hinata!” Practically scream her father in horror, “What… who did that to you? What happened?” 

“It has nothing to do with Neji-niisan’s death”, she let out with an impressive husky voice, her body tensing up even more than before, a feat Naruto would have never thought possible.

“Hinata-san, if someone hurt you, you can tell us, we’re here to protect yo-”

“I have nothing left to say!” She shot with the aggressiveness of a corned deer, jumping from her chair on her two feet, scaring both her father and lawyer. “Otou-san, I desire to leave. Now!”

“Uzumaki-san, please forgive my daughter, she must be exhausted from the hardships of the day. With your permission, we’ll leave it as it is for the moment”, had taken over her father before Naruto had seen them off with a Policeman at the entrance of the building, the girl’s face being nothing but a mix of hatred and disgust. 

“Something big happened last night before Neji’s murder”, had commented Sasuke later on, once Naruto had joined him back in the control room, an undecipherable look on his face. “I’m not sure if it has anything to do with the murder, but something big and bad happened. The Tenten girl that Sakura-san and Hatake-keibu are interrogating right now is also sporting marks of assault.”

Naruto almost dislocated his neck by turning his face full force toward Sasuke, stunned.

“Tenten? _The_ Tenten that Hinata called to pick up from her cousin’s place?”

Sasuke nodded, his eyes still glancing through the tinted window at the interrogation room.

“Apparently, after dropping Hinata at her place, she went back over there and left around a quarter to half an hour past midnight.” Naruto withheld his disbelief.

“Really, the Rinnegan Killer truly knows how to pick his victims”, he hissed between his teeth. 

Sasuke finally gave him a side stare and, out of nowhere, told him: “You did good for a first time today, Uzumaki-san. You did good”, before turning around and leaving the room, Naruto feeling even more emotionally confused than he was before.

From what Sakura and Kakashi had managed to get from Tenten, she had picked up Hinata and then decided to go hang out with Neji a bit; after all, they were living really close from one another and were childhood friends. She had stated that they had talked on his couch for about an hour, before leaving to go home to the flat she shared with a common friend of theirs, a certain Rock Lee, whom Hinata had also mentioned in her testimony. 

This meant that, with his incredible sense of timing, the Rinnegan killer had showed up probably less than an hour or two after Tenten had left, making him either the most adaptive and calculating man ever or the luckiest bastard in history for, as it turned out, Tenten was a renowned university Jiu-Jitsu practitioner and would have probably managed to knock him down within seconds. 

However, the most intriguing part of this subcase -other than why the Rinnegan Killer had decided to stray from his pattern- was the two girls’ marks of brutality on their skins, Hinata exhibiting the most shocking ones. Both young women had dismissed them, saying it had nothing to do with the murder, but Naruto couldn’t help but feel a nervous knot form in his stomach at the thought of the two shadow hands encircling Ōtsutsuki Hinata’s tiny neck. 

The team discussed it at great length before deciding that they needed a break and should go grab something to eat, sending Naruto on an errand for food and more cigarettes at the local konbini. As he pressed on the elevator’s call button, he checked the time on his phone. 11:05 p.m. What would he give to be able to go home, shower and sleep? The elevator opened and he got inside, humming an automatic “good evening” to the person already in there. His destination already pressed, he settled in the shaft, arms resting behind his neck in what he wanted to be a relaxed pose. His back was hurting from remaining seated for so long lately, and this pose helped him decompress his spin. Mechanically, eyes travelled to his neighbor, a woman engrossed in the reading of a report, and he recognized her long greenish hair, as well as her blue bangs.

“Hey, you’re the lady from last time!” He shouted out, spookying her out in the process. “You vanished before I had the chance to make sure you were o-”

The woman turned towards him questioning eyes and Naruto dropped dead in the middle of his sentence, too busy detailing her from top to bottom. She was looking different. Older, more tired maybe. Her discolored green hair gathered into a low ponytail that lazy hanged over her shoulder, her military boots, tight black jeans and flecked grey tank top under a leather jacket resembled nothing like her previous style, but she had guarded the same small stature, the marble skin and above all, those clear, pure lavender eyes.

She raised her brows, like she wondered if he wasn’t in the middle of having a stroke or something.

“Hum, Uzumaki-san?” She asked, unsure, after eyeing the badge that hung around his neck, “Are you feeling alright?”

Something was wrong. Naruto’s brain couldn’t comprehend it. Something was wrong. It couldn’t be, but at the same time, nothing else made sense. Something was wrong. He harshly pulled her over, ignoring her scream of surprise, followed by a grunt of indignation, as he swiftly grabbed her badge. Something was wrong. It couldn’t be. Something was wrong.

 _What is even a “crime analyst”?_ He thought to himself. He had never heard about such a position in Division 1. 

“Let go of me!” she defensively protested, freeing herself from his grasp. The elevator reached its destination, the cabin trembling for the sudden stop. Annoyed, she made a move to reach for the doors but Naruto was quicker. He pressed the “stop” button, effectively preventing the metal doors from opening and the petite woman gave him a glance full of hostility that looked exactly like the one he had received a couple of hours before.

“Open the door” she demanded with fire, “Open the door now or I’ll fill out a complaint to your supervisor.”

His brain couldn’t wrap itself around it. It seemed impossible, it _was_ impossible -right? Her physical appearance, her age, damn it, even her name, all of it looked like a distorted version of the timid and savage girl he had questioned in the afternoon. It couldn’t be, and yet…

“Ōtsutsuki Hinata?” Formed his lips, his mind too incredulous to fully comprehend what was unfolding before his very own eyes. 


	2. Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I say I would update every Monday of November? 👀
> 
> Following the comments I received on the last chapter (thank you to all of you 🥰), I decided to rewrite part of the story and... Well, the last part of this chapter must have been through 6 or 7 different versions before I eventually decided that I had had enough and dropped the case. I'm not really satisfied with it, but it was either publishing it like that or not publishing it at all so I took a hard decision!
> 
> Anyways, thank you so much for your support! I know that this is A LOT of plot and that people will probably riot when they don't see that much NaruHina, however, following the extensive rewritings Part II went through, I ended up separating it into two, leaving most of the fluff for another time, sorry #ImTheWorst
> 
> I still hope some of you manage to enjoy ^_^"

Hinata’s heart skipped a beat. Or two.

The last time someone had called her by her birth name felt like an eternity away, so far behind her that from time to time, she would actually forget that she wasn’t born a Hyūga. 

It used to be her mother’s maiden name back in the day, before she got sick or married, before she even could have fathomed finding a husband and birthing two baby girls, probably. 

As a child, the concept of abandoning one’s name was unfamiliar to Hinata, and she couldn’t quite wrap her head around it. It felt incredibly unfair to her then naive self for someone to have to change identity for it was the name given to them by their parents, but after joining college, she had let go of all these high principles and great ideas that had peopled her ever evolving brain and embraced her new surname.

To this day, she still wouldn’t be able to pinpoint the exact moment in time where she had sloughed out of her own identity and body. All she knew was that, one day, she was a well-put together and modest-looking young Ōtsutsuki, anxious about her looks and the image she projected to society, fully aware of the way that her entire family’s reputation lived through her own reflection; the other one, she looked like Hyūga Hinata.

Maybe it was because somewhere, someday, something had died within her, something that could not get extracted by any physical means or surgery and like a phantom pain, every small bits of her that had ever been touched by her cousin’s was wilting, slowly killing her in the process but, instead of letting herself rot from the inside, she had opted for erasing any remnant of the person she used to be, one cell at the time, until the only thing that remained was someone so foreign from her original self that that new person could not possibly be wearing the same name as before.

The report she was going through -the sordid murder of a young child in a small countryside village that involved a poison-pen letter-writer- turned into sheets of flying paper in the cabin before gently settling on the ground like feathers, something that her mind did not compute straight away. Her head was spinning and gravity gave way beneath her feet. It was like she was falling backwards, slipping on her back -except she wasn’t. 

She managed to recognize him as the man in the elevator from a couple of nights ago but, did they actually know one another? Otherwise, how could he have known her birth name? No one around the precinct knew, she was positive about that, as she was going by Hyūga as written on her badge. 

It felt like the temperature within the shaft had risen abruptly, her throat tightening so much that she would soon be gasping desperately for air. Anxiety seized her whole, clenching her stomach, her guts, her respiratory tracts, as the cacophony of memories the name “Ōtsutsuki” brought back to the surface invaded her every thought.

“I… I… I... ” she began to stutter, her mind shutting down as she fought against the darkness that threatened to take her, “You must be mistaken, my name is Hyūga Hinata.” 

She made a slight movement towards the control panel in hopes of reopening the doors and leaving this living hell before she would faint, but the man stood firmly in between them.

“What are you doing here dressed up like that?” He accused her, much to Hinata’s incomprehension. She was feeling weak, vulnerable, her head like a tin metal box stuck twenty leagues under the sea and trying to resist the acute pressure of the water surrounding it. “This part of the building is strictly meant for authorized personnel only!”

Hinata breathed in, trying to clear her mind. This guy was crazy, that was the only explanation. Better to just ignore him, quickly walk to the konbini for some dinner and rush back into the sanctity of her office as quickly as possible before this lunatic assaulted her in her own work place.

Gathering all the forces she could in her current state, she purposely hooked her opponent to get past him, her hand reaching out to press the “stop” button again to cancel its action and start the elevator again, but he saw right through her manoeuvre and unceremoniously grabbed her wrist, crushing her tiny bones to dust.

“Let go of me” she faintly demanded, her pale skin already marking under the tightening noose of his strong hold.

“Did you try to infiltrate the building to steal evidence?” He badgered her as he got uncomfortably closer to her, his head tilting toward the scattered report on the floor. 

The pressure exerted on her brain was so harsh that Hinata could already feel a migraine looming beyond the frights of the original fainting sensation but, no matter how sick she felt or how small her actual frame was compared to his, she just couldn’t let a stranger brutalize her like that in her own precinct.

“I don’t know what you are talking about or what you think my name is” she articulated with all the assertiveness and authority she could inject into words right now, “But I’ve been working in this precinct for about a year and a half now. Plus, you’ve seen my badge, you got me trapped in this elevator, you’re crushing my wrist and I’m getting really ill at ease so please, the very least you can do is come down and let go of my arm.” 

Probably realizing how bad the situation could look like to an exterior observer, the young man finally released her hand, a quick blush brushing his cheeks, before resuming his bickering with greater intensity.

“Yeah, sure, you ‘work’ here”, he mocked her with an ugly grin deprived of any warmth. “Nice try, but there is no such thing as a ‘Crime analyst’, especially in Division 1, or I would know about it.”

“What are you talking about”, retorted Hinata, exasperation perspiring from her tone as her headache grew bigger and her patience thinner, “The Tokyo Metropolitan Police has been using them since 2011.”

Something she just said must have triggered him in some way as he jerked back, stunned by her words, but she didn’t understand why. His brows furrowed, and he looked at her like she had said a really silly thing.

“What do you mean by ‘since 2011’?” He enunciated, his voice sounding strangely hollow. Hinata blinked, unsure.

“That the TMP has had Crime analysts operating in its ranks for eight years?” She tried again, slower this time so he could understand.

“For eight years?” He yelled in Hinata’s face, generously spluttering on her. “As in, now it’s 2019?”

His sudden reaction took her aback. What did he mean with his _now it’s 2019?_ What was this guy’s deal?

“Yes, because it is?” Confirmed Hinata, her head retreating as far as possible from his to avoid any more splash downs. Her stress and migraine intensified as the man started to ramble incoherently in front of her, his right hand pressing the bridge of his nose as he tried to gather his thoughts.

“No no no no no no no”, he frantically let out, “I just saw you this afternoon! I interrogated you, you were standing in front of me with your father and lawyer!”

“I-I really don’t think so”, she answered, both her hands now massaging her temples in an effort to sooth her pain. Maybe he was confusing her with some other woman called Ōtsutsuki Hinata that happened to look like her? This was the only plausible explanation to this madness.

“No, I’m sure it was you”, he shouted, pinching his nose bridge, “We talked about your cousin Neji’s death!”

He _definitely_ knew who she was. Worse, he knew about Neji. The rest didn’t make much sense, but she felt too overwhelmed to even try to comprehend it. All she cared about was that he knew. Tears started to form in the corners of her eyes, and Uzumaki Naruto must have noticed them, for the shadow of a concern crossed his belligerent face.

“Listen”, she croaked, her words a prayer, “I don’t know how you know about all of this but… It happened over ten years ago. I just want to live my life peacefully, so please, don’t walk around screaming about it in the entire precinct, please, I’ll do...”

The fracture in her skull was becoming so intolerable that she lost balance and hit her shoulder against one of the malleable sides of the shaft, her nails digging into her skin, applying as much pressure as she could to help soften the pain from the inside.

She was ready to beg him. If it would buy his silence at least at work, she would. Damn, she would pay him if needed. She wanted the peace of mind, she needed to feel safe and painfully normal at work. It was the center of her universe. If someone took that away from her… She’d be left with nothing to live for.

She felt both his hands on her again, this time firmly pressing her shoulders and in the midst of her episode, she still managed to partially open her eyes, the pain so powerful that it felt like every cell of her body had to force to keep them this way. In front of her, his electric blue eyes diving right into her, a serious, almost grave expression on his face, the man stood still.

“No” he said firmly, having regain a semblance of control, “I mean, we discussed your cousin’s murder today, like, in 2008, ya know.”

Hinata opened her mouth, but no sound came out of it. Behind her once again closed lids, her migraine reached its high and she collapsed on Naruto, her mind and body finally giving up.

Who knew exactly how long they had spent in this blocked elevator? Hinata wasn’t too sure about it but she couldn’t have cared less, as she watched Naruto pace back and forth before her in the small shaft. 

He had helped her avoid smashing her head against the hard surface of the shaft’s ground, and had patiently waited by her side for the storm to pass. Then, they had confronted proofs, facts, IDs, phones even, reaching the only logical solution they could think of: they had, somehow, broken through the veils of space and time -in a precinct lift, no less.

“I cannot believe that you’re from _eleven years_ into the future!” Practically screamed Naruto, his hands frantically scratching the back of his head so much that his neck was actually red. Hinata sighed, exhausted by his antics. They had been through this at least five times already but that wasn’t still enough for the young Sergeant, apparently.

She was still feeling weak from her violent headache and Naruto’s rather loud and agitated demeanor was proving quite hard to handle in her situation. She limited herself to a subtle humming of approval )a vain attempt at easing his relentlessness- and kept on massaging her forehead.

“I mean, you were there in front of me this afternoon, looking all young and defenseless and stuff and now… Look at you!” He added, his hand pointing at her in the most offensive way possible.

“I beg your pardon?” She hissed, life unexpectedly flowing back into her system as she took offense of the tone and attitude Naruto displayed so casually in front of a senior colleague, but the blond kept on jabbering without paying much attention to her.

“I mean, now you’re _old_ , with crazy greenie hair and absolutely improper clothes for the workspace…”

Hinata saw red instantly, her blood up.

“Excuse-me, _what_?” She stormed as she hurriedly stood up to face the blond blabber-mouth. That was a miscalculation from her part though, as the sudden change of position made her feel dizzy again, doubting for a moment her own balance.

“Come on, I mean, look at this”, gibed Naruto, an insultingly condescending look upon his face, his hand casually waving at her outfit, “I don’t know how you guys do it in the future but this isn’t Hollywood, it’s the TMP!”

Hinata didn’t know what to say in front of such toxic comments.

_The audacity_.

She was about to formulate a comeback when, in a turnabout, Naruto’s face lighted up.

“Did we ever arrest the Rinnegan killer?” He asked, switching subjects as if nothing had happened. Hinata’s eyes shoot daggers at him, but she ultimately decided to drop the matter of the outfit comment for now. “Did I become a famous Inspector? What about Haruno-san? And Uchiha-san? And Hatake-keibu? What are they up to now?”

“No, not even close”, she quipped, feeling incredibly childish for using such a mocking tone with a baby like him. “Plus, I’ve never come across any Inspector named Uzumaki at the precinct.”

His mouth dropped into a pout, and he grunted at her, visibly sulky.

“That doesn’t mean a thing. I could be working as an Inspector in some other Police station, right?” He pleaded, a hint of hope in his eyes and tone.

“I hope so for you”, said ironically Hinata, “For I highly doubt you could withstand how _Hollywood_ the place has become.” The blond grouched even more. 

With the shameless satisfaction of having shut him off, she decided it was time for them to refocus on the situation at hand.

“Anyway, that’s not the most important right now.” Their little altercation had actually made her feel better and she could sense that if she wasn’t taking things into her own hands, they would still be discussing their year of origin by tomorrow morning. For a Police Sergeant, this Uzumaki Naruto wasn’t striking her as particularly smart or quick. “We know we’ve met at least two times here, in this exact shaft. How did we manage to do it?” She wondered, her eyes lingering on the plain walls of the shaft, looking for a sign of witchcraft or an alien artefact that could explain their paradox.

“Well, I guess we need to both be in the elevator”, suggested Naruto, still bitter from her last riposte. “Remember, I told you that when I followed you outside of it last time, you had disappeared and I was back in 2008.”

Hinata nodded. “And me in 2019, yes. But then, would that mean that if I exited the elevator right now and went back in straight away, we could see each other again, as long as you didn’t leave it?”

Naruto shrugged his shoulders, obviously as clueless as she was. “I guess one of us would need to try to find out.”

“Shall I, then?” She offered, a bit nervous. The blond tiredly approved and she walked to the control panel, restarting the machine. Straight away, the shaft abruptly trembled and as its mechanism turned back on, the door opened before them. Hinata glanced hesitantly at the duly lighted corridor outside that led to the lobby of the precinct, and took a step toward the world that awaited her.

“Wait”, interrupted Naruto as she was to cross the threshold of the cabin, “What if we never managed to meet each other again?” 

Hinata quickly dismissed the idea with a shake of the head.

“We saw each other twice in five days, I’m sure we’ll meet again in there one way or another, Uzumaki-san” she told him. She was still mad about his hurtful comments about her physical appearance, but the sight of him looking genuinely anxious about whether or not they could ever be reunited melted some of her anger away, and she gave him a smile of encouragement in spite of herself. He nodded nimbly at her, his eyes full of childish hope. Hinata internally sighed. He could almost look cute, when he wanted to.

With Naruto looking slightly comforted, she was about to resume her move when he hailed her again.

“What about the marks on your throat?” 

Her eyes closed tight at the mention of the incident and this time, she did not turn around to face him.

“I thought you interviewed me already. If so, you should remember that I certified that had nothing to do with the Rinnegan killer” she wheezed. And with that, she left the cabin. 

The cold air of the corridor washed over her body as she stepped in the hallway for a second, examiniating her surroundings. Everything looked like it was in her memories, and she deduced that she was indeed back in 2019. She turned around to position herself in front of the open shaft and, a breath of fresh air blocked in her chest, reentered it.

“Uzumaki-san?” She inquired stupidly, although she knew it was useless. Clammy, with a lingering smell of sweat, the elevator was devoid of any other human presence, her spilled report on the floor sporting for only proof of what just had happened the numerous traces of shoes they had left on them during their nervous walks. He was back in 2008.

As November was coming to an end in Tokyo, Christmas-themed promotional events all over town took off in the stores with businesses trying to cash in on that popular western holiday, but as she navigated the streets of Taitō City around Asakusabashi Station, Hinata couldn’t have been more oblivious to the festive mood surrounding her. 

She had barely slept last night, her brain still trying to process what had happened only a couple of hours before in this elevator shaft, her body laying in her king sized bed wide awake until the first rays of dawn had started to be visible from her window. Too excited by what was happening to her, her body running on pure adrenaline and liters of tea, she had finally given up on sleep and simply got up, stopping by their local konbini to get breakfast for everyone. 

As she settled in her office chair, food awaiting in plastic bags next to her for her teammates to arrive, she had then turned on her computer and decided to lead her own investigation on this Uzumaki Naruto. If he really was who he claimed he was and if he really came from when he claimed to, shouldn’t she be able to gather some evidence to back all this craziness up?

She opened her browser and typed his name, expecting to find a social media page, an account somewhere, anything really that could corroborate their out-of-this-world encounter -but nothing.

Her lips drew a small pout, but not everyone nowadays was on the internet after all, she told herself, and if he had been in his early to mid twenties in 2008, he must have been somewhere around thirty-five nowadays, which made this explanation pretty plausible. 

Unfortunately for her, her status as a Crime analyst proved equally unhelpful; she had an extremely restricted access to the Tokyo and National Police databases and none of her requests returned her a thing. After an intense fight against the TMP server, she finally admitted defeat and focused on her disappeared child report, picking up where she had left the night before while waiting for her colleagues to show up.

Shino arrived first, only a couple of minutes before 8 a.m., and when Kiba and Akamaru loudly barged in some twenty minutes later, they found the two of them peacefully eating their breakfast over a shared sudoku, collaborating to finish it in between two bites of onigiri or yakisoba bun. 

“Well, well, well”, commented Kiba as he started digging in the konbini bags, “What do we have here…”

Without departing his eyes from the grid, Shino handed the Assistant Inspector the nato makis they had specially set aside for their friend and Hinata smiled when she saw a wide smirk light up Kiba’s features. He swiftly grabbed them from the student’s hand and sat down, the first one he unwrapped going to Akamaru.

“You’re going to kill him one day if you keep feeding him this crap”, notified him Shino as he casually filled out a number on the page.

Kiba grunted back, shaking his own maki under Shino’s nose. “Shino, there’s only good and healthy stuff in there. Rice, nori, nato; are you sure you’re Japanese and not Korean? Only a Korean would be this hostile to nato.”

“I highly doubt that they are the only defiant ones when it comes to nato, Kiba-kun”, chuckled Hinata. An idea suddenly crossed her mind. “Hum, Kiba-kun?”, she tried as casually as possible, trying to keep his attention as he fed Akamaru an onigiri, “By any chance, would you still be well-connected enough to find someone, if you needed to?”

Kiba examined her for a second, surprised by her request, before nodding and grabbing his personal notebook and a pen. 

“Sure, anything for a friend. What’s their name?”

Hinata repressed a cry of triumph. “Uzumaki Naruto”, she dictated as serenely as possible. “I know that he used to work in this precinct back in 2008 in Division 1, homicide section probably. And that was a Sergeant at that time. Is that enough?” 

The man finished writing down her description, his tongue slightly sticking out under the effort. “Division 1, sarg, yep, that should do it!” He concurred. “But, what could you want from this guy?” He inquired before taking a bite of his maki, “Is he a prospective boyfriend with a shady past?”

_Not even close…_ Thought Hinata as she dramatically rolled her eyes at her laughing friend as they resumed their breakfast before heading back to work.

It took all of her energy and concentration to keep focusing on her reports for the rest of the day, her mind furiously slipping away from her each occasion it stumbled across, the mysterious young man from another time monopolizing her every thought. She had decided not to tell her colleagues a word about her supernatural meeting, too anxious about the kind of reactions such a bomb would earn her.

Kurenai announcing that they really needed to settle on a try-out case for KONOHA by the next day and that they should all -except for Shino, of course- come up with suggestions to tomorrow morning’s daily meeting helped Hinata come down however, and not in the most pleasant of ways. Most of the cases she had read about were rather boring; the Ito family one was way too intense for her; the little boy’s abduction would probably prove too hard for Kurenai to handle -being herself the mother of a young child- and, from what she picked up after briefly discussing it with Kiba while he was getting ready to leave at the end of the day, it was roughly the same for him.

Her next try -a mundane disappearance- was on the brink of putting her to sleep when her phone alarm went off, the loud vibrations of the plastic case against the hardwood of her desk echoing in the room like an orchestra. Jumping off of her chair, she eagerly checked the time before turning it off and quickly hurried to the same elevator she had used the day before, her legs trembling with excitement. 

While laying down her bed last night, her boiling imagination had come up with a theory regarding the mechanism of their time travel, and she couldn’t wait to check if she had guessed it right.

A characteristic “ding” echoed down the hall and the doors barely had time to open that Hinata was already dashing inside the shaft, the violence of her entrance shaking the suspended metal box.

A victorious smile enlightened her tired features as she acknowledged the blond young man that was sitting on a chair in a corner of the cabin, a pile of paper on the floor next to him, a highlighter and a report in his hands. He raised his head monotonically and a wide grin quickly stretched across his lips when he recognized his visitor.

“Ōtsutsuki-san!” He enthusiastically shouted as he carefully dropped his stuff on his chair and got up to welcome her, “Finally!”

He then audaciously proceeded with hugging her, the spontaneity of his action making Hinata blush and tense up. “I’ve been waiting for you all day long!” 

Trying to ignore the warmth of his embrace and reminding herself how much of an ass he had been the day before, Hinata pulled away from this embarrassing non-public display of affection with a semi-stranger and gave him a intrigued look as she pointed at the chair in the corner.

“You’ve spent the entire day in the elevator to... Try to meet me again?” She wondered, puzzled. Naruto innocently nodded, and his naivety made Hinata chuckle in spite of herself.

“What, didn’t you also try all day long to see me again?” He asked, frowning, a pout promptly replacing the grin on his face. Hinata sheepishly shook her head as she tried to tone down her giggles.

“I remembered that the first time, I must have gotten in the elevator after 11 p.m., and that the second time, it was not 11:10 p.m. yet, so I deduced our time frame from it”, she explained soberly. Naruto swung his head, impressed.

“Smart woman”, he noticed, and Hinata blushed again at the unexpected compliment.

They stood in front of each other for a while, silence awkwardly settling in between them. Although they couldn’t wait to meet again, they had nothing special to say to one another.

Naruto brushed the back of his head again and let out a nervous laugh. “Hum, by the way…” He started, making the first move, “I’m sorry. About what I said yesterday, ya know. About you being… Old. And the Hollywood thing.”

Hinata’s lips turned into a thin line, and she reluctantly nodded at him to accept his weak apology. At least, he was trying.

“Cause, ya know, yes, obviously you’re older but you ain’t that old-”

“What were you working on?” She cut him straight away, eager to put an end to this embarrassing exchange, her head tilting at his improvised desk. He scratched the back of his head, bashful. “Oh, I’m reviewing all the different interviews of the murders from the latest Rinnegan killer’s cycle, ya know. But I ain’t getting far, to be honest.” 

That case, again. Even though Hinata knew that he had no one to let the cat out of the bag to regarding her identity, the fact that he was working on it and worse, that he had _actually_ interrogated her within the scope of his investigation a decade ago made her feel excessively nervous. Most of her adult life, she had desperately tried to avoid the tragedy that had ended four lives that very night.

She suddenly came back to her senses and secretly rejoiced that Naruto hadn’t noticed her inner turmoil, for he was too busy blabbing about his case.

“So, you said yesterday that he hadn’t reappeared in your timeline, right?”

He looked both bothered and relieved when she confirmed that the murderer had yet to manifest himself again, at least to her knowledge; nevertheless, she hardly believed that she could have missed it though: the guy was the most famous serial killer in Japan’s recent history and on top of that, she worked in the precinct that led the case. If there had been even the shadow of a doubt that he was being active again, she would have heard about it.

“That’s weird, but I guess it’s better for everyone” he grunted.

“Do you remember the dates of all the previous murders?” Queried Hinata in a futile attempt to comfort the young boy, his defeated expression raising sympathy in her heart for him against her own will. He vaguely nodded, his good nature clouded by the news, a childish pout on display for her to see.

“Yeah, they are kinda easy to memorize”, he mumbled, grumpy. “The Rinnegan killer kills like clockwork. March 21 and 28, 1986, June 21 and 28, 1997, and now September 21 and 28, 2008”, he recited, like a poem.

Hinata snapped her fingers. “Well, his time hasn’t come already, that’s probably why”, she replied, tit for tat. The blond man raised a dubious eyebrow and she shrugged her shoulders casually.

“Isn’t it obvious?” She started to explain, trying her best not to sound too conceited. “The next cycle of murders will start on December 21 if he sticks to his pattern, and it’s still late November in my timeline. He’s perpetuating the first round on the first day of a new season each time. Didn’t you guys notice that?”

Naruto opened his mouth, but no sound came out. 

Apparently, nobody had.

“How did you figure that out so fast?” He marvelled, and in this very moment, it truly hit her how young and inexperienced he was.

“It’s nothing, really” she protested. _A child could have made that connection_. “I’m a Crime analyst, that’s my job anyway…”

She explained to him broadly what her job consisted of, telling him about SUNA and KONOHA, and how they were looking for a compelling training first case for their new tool.

“Why not the Rinnegan Killer case, then?” Almost immediately shouted Naruto, obviously way too interested in Shino's baby, making Hinata worry that she may have described the program a little too positively.

“I don’t know”, she prevaricated. The case was extremely personal to her, to say the least, and it seemed unethical for her to be working on it, even if none of her teammates were aware of her intimate connection to the murders. No matter how hard she tried, she would be biased in one way or another, and that was the last thing she wanted.

“Oh, come on, Ōtsutsuki-san!” pressed Naruto, all fired up at the perspective of gaining the help of a barely existing AI, “Think about it: don’t you want the murderer of your cousin to get arrested? Don’t you want people to be safe when December comes? Plus,” and this time, his voice got more whiny, “I don’t want to spend my entire life being the errand boy of my team, so please please please help me get promoted, please?”

The puppy eyes and playful pout he carried pulled a smile of her. 

Came to think about it, it wasn’t hurting anyone if she suggested it alongside some other case. Moreover, Kiba and Kurenai would also be coming up with crimes of their own, so the chances for her team to pick this one up were pretty low. Following this logic -and not wanting to disappoint the innocent and refreshing young man that hopped up and down with impatience in front of her-, she agreed to ask her team, but “Only if you stop calling me ‘Ōtsutsuki’. I’m ‘Hyūga’ now”.

“Deal.” 

He extended her a hand for her to shake it and, after a brief hesitation, she grabbed it, unknowingly sealing her fate to his.

Til this day, Hinata had never believed that she had become a Police staff because of the tragedy that had impacted her life. She had never felt a desire to “avenge” Neji’s death or “solve his case”, for she had dedicated all of her energy to actually _forget_ about it as much as possible.

She may have been wrong.

Come to think of it, it was her despair, the feeling of powerlessness she had felt during the entire investigation, the sensation of being reduced to a child-like state without a self sense of agency that had ultimately pushed her towards the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, among other things -such as pissing off her reactionary _bourgeois_ father. 

Moreover, ever since she had met Naruto and he had asked her to submit the Rinnegan case to her team, she had been left to wonder: what if her personal haunting came down to this murder and needed to see her solve this very crime for her to really be able to move on?

After parting ways with the young Sergeant, she headed to the archives department located on the ground floor of building, setting foot for the first time ever in the dusty and stale smelling front desk area guarding the labyrinthic pathways of metal shelving units filled to the brim with plain cardboard boxes full of evidences and report that constituted the precinct’s archives. 

In the entrance -that must have measured less than five square meters-, facing the front door, a wall with a secure access to the warehouse hosted the reception desk, with a simple table with two chairs that had been arranged for people to look up files on the spot be the finishing touch to the skimpy area.

Behind the reception glass, an older administrative staff was busy watching some late evening TV show and ignored her superbly the first time she coughed to get their attention. 

Hinata coughed again, louder.

“I heard you the first time”, they snapped, their eyes still on the small TV that accentuated their wrinkles in the semi-darkness of the small space. Hinata twitched, uncomfortable. She may have grown into a more self-assured and assertive woman, confronting openly hostile people was still not her forte. Biting the bullet, she took a deep breath and stepped closer to the glass, a determined expression on her face.

“My apologies, Obāsan. I wish not to be a disturbance, but I would really need to access the reports of a specific case and-”

The old lady abruptly moved her face against the glass, her eyes squeezing hard to seize a glance of Hinata’s badge. Taken aback by the woman’s strange attitude, Hinata didn’t dare to move a muscle and let her examine her badge through the thick window. Thirty seconds had passed when the agent finally retreated back to her original pose behind her TV. 

“Obāsan?” Tried Hinata, louder than before so her voice would reach through the glass.

“You’re an auxiliary personnel. Come back with a Sergeant or higher and then we’ll talk.”

_Keep your cool, Hina. Don’t let her scare you off, you’re an adult now._

“I know that I’m not an inspector”, answered Hinata with a forced smile on her lips, clearly pronouncing every syllable of each word, “But my status still allows me to consult the archives under supervision.”

The woman stopped staring at her screen to fix her annoyed gaze on Hinata under duress, knowing full well that she was right. She sighed exaggeratedly and turned her computer screen back on before getting into her system.

“What’s the case ID number?” Growled the archivist, unwilling. Out of anxiety, Hinata bit her lower lip.

“Hum, I don’t actually know the number”, she shyly acknowledged with her best sorry smile. “Maybe we could look it up using some keywords?”

Fifteen minutes of intense arguing and supplication later, Hinata was sitting at the one plain table in the archive’s entrance, already going through the first boxes that the woman had gotten her, seeking for every report she could put her hands on. She was actively taking them out and pilling them onto the desk when the Administrative personnel got her the last two boxes available, notifying her with a bitter tone that the 2008 reports had all been digitized a couple of years ago and that they didn’t have them in a physical form anymore.

“Would you mind printing them all for me?” Had then asked Hinata without even leaving her precious documents out of sight, her request scandalizing her interlocutor.

“ _All_ of them?” The administrative personnel practically choked, on the brink of apoplexy. However, seeing how engrossed in her task Hinata was and that the Crime Analyst wasn’t paying her any attention anymore, she gave up and walked back to her office behind the safety glass to print the five hundred pages of report, the enormous mass needed a couple of trips for it to be entirely delivered to Hinata. 

Once finally done with her foul of a customer who had dared to disrupt the peace and quiet of her midnight binge-watch, she retreated to her den, exhausted and fuming.

“Does the lady need something else before I leave?” She inquired with all the sarcasm she was capable of, rage tensing her sickly and puny silhouette. Oblivious to the situation, Hinata raised her head from the file she was reading, a big naive smile on her face.

“Paper and a pen would be nice”, she suggested, innocently, before burying herself back in the case that had ended so many people’s lives -including hers.

“On Friday March 21, 1986, the police received a call at 7:13 a.m. from Biwako, the Namikaze’s nanny, who had found the bodies of both parents at home after arriving there like every other day of the work week to take care of their son.” 

“Uchiha Fugaku is presenting multiple stab wounds all over the torso, but only the one received at the throat, effectively severing his carotid artery, was deadly.” “Estimated time of death 1:20 a.m.”

“None of the video cameras surrounding the building were recording that night.”

“Senju Tsunade’s lower abdomen had been cut open and marks of strangulation found on their neck, collapsing her windpipe and diminishing her air intake extremely, leading to a long suffocation before the victim finally dying of blood loss.” “Time of death was estimated around 2:25 a.m.”

“No physical evidence collected on the scene of the murder.”

“Namikaze Minato, 32 years old, was found with multiple injuries in the bedroom he shared with his wife.” “His carotid artery had been sliced.” “Time of death was estimated around 1:30 a.m.” 

“Umino Kohari was found by the police after the ongoing cries and screams of her four year old son alerted the neighbors.” “The victim’s had been eviscerated.” “Marks of attempted strangulation on her neck.” “The same symbol than the one found above Namikaze Kushina a week prior was painted with her blood on the wall next to her.” “Time of death around 2:30 a.m.”

“It is suspected that the killer interacted with Namikaze Naruto, the victims’ three year old son, as a glass without any other fingerprints but the child’s was found in his bedroom.”

“Katō Dan has suffered from six chest stab wounds, with the cut of his carotid artery being fatal.” “He died around 1:25 a.m.”

“The neighbors didn’t hear a sound.”

“Namikaze Kushina was found on the other side of their bedroom.” “Her lower abdomen had been cut open and her intestines pulled out.” “The victim was lying under a symbol representing an open eye with concentric circles in its retina.” “Undocumented til now.”

“Umino Iruka, the victim’s 4 years old son, was found severely dehydrated and locked inside his bedroom.” “He claimed that the boogeyman had taken away his mother and closed the door of his bedroom.” 

“None of the building’s tenants saw nor heard anything outside of the ordinary.”

“Yakushi Nonō was disembowell, resulting in an hemorrhagic shock.” “Unlike previous female victims, no signs of strangulation were found.” “Her small frame and frail constitution may have made her an easier target.” “Time of death estimated around 2:30 a.m.”

“Unidentified male hair found on the scene. No database correspondence.” 

“Ōtsutsuki Neji suffered from multiple stab wounds, one hitting his heart’s left ventricle, deadly injuring him.” “Estimated time of death: 3:15 a.m.”

“Uchiha Mikoto’s body was found next to her husband’s.” “She had been gutted empty.” “Her hands displayed defensive wounds.” “Died of blood loss around 2:50 a.m.”

“No fingerprints or DNA were collected on the crime scene: the murderer was probably wearing leather gloves and a ski mask.”

“Ōtsutsuki Hinata-”

And she brutally dropped the report, the sudden mention of her name being too hard for her to sustain.

Her team was actually already settled in their office, patiently waiting for her to join them when she finally regained the sixth floor after a sleepless night at the archives, her heart racing in her chest against the pile of notes she was holding tight in her arms. They all greeted her warmly and before Kurenai had the time to even start speaking, she jumped the gun and stood before them all, her stomach contracting from stress and exhaustion.

“Yūhi-keibu, before we start this meeting, I would like to tell everyone that I believe I have found the perfect case for Konoha”, she claimed with all the assertiveness she was capable of. She then held the report in full view of everyone, the title in evidence for her teammates to see. “What if we fed KONOHA…” And with this, she took a deep breath, “... The Rinnegan killer case?”

Both Kurenai and Kiba displayed a surprised look, while Shino remained unshakeable behind his glasses, but no one said a word. Taking it as a sign of encouragement, Hinata kept on going.

“Think about it: we have nine murders that span the length of two decades, an incredibly meticulous killer, thousands of pages of interviews, investigation reports and clues, and on top of that, it’s a personal matter for our district as we were the ones in charge of it and failed to identify and arrest him thrice. Furthermore, it’s been eleven years since the last murders and if he sticks to his original pattern, I believe there is a chance for him to strike again by the end of the year, if he’s still around.” 

She pinched her lips into a thin line, worried at her colleagues’ lack of reaction. “So, what do you say?”

Kiba rocked his head, the corners of his mouth lowering into an impressed pout.

“I say: let’s do it! This is a legendary cold case with more than enough evidence for the program, let’s give it a try!” He then smirked, a devilish look upon his face. “Man, I can already picture Sarutobi’s expression! When he’s gonna learn that I’m working on it…”

“I don’t have any objections to it”, added calmly Shino, to Hinata’s relief. The three of them then turned toward Kurenai, who looked way less enthusiastic about the suggestion than the rest of her team.

“I don’t know, Hinata-kun”, she hesitated, an insecure sorry smile on, “This may be a case too famous and risky for us to use as a test subject. I don’t know how our hierarchy would react to this…”

It was like a stone had dropped in Hinata’s stomach. She had spent her entire night browsing through thousands of notes, testimonies and scientific reports, assimilating as much of the case as she could within minimal time... All for nothing?

“Yūhi-keibu.”

Both Kiba and Hinata instantly turned their heads towards the raspy voice. Shino, for the first time in what felt like an eternity, was actually intervening in one of their conversations.

“Yūhi-keibu”, he repeated, his deep and serene voice commanding the room around him, “Didn’t Hatake Kakashi, the Superintendent of Division 1, used to be in charge of the leading Rinnegan killer investigation team back in 2008?

“I-I think so, yes, Shino-kun”, assented Kurenai, unsettled by Shino’s question. Kiba and Hinata exchanged a lost look; neither of them saw where the young doctoral student wanted to go with this.

“And wasn’t he the one that, as your Superintendent, ultimately ruled you unfit for the field?”

Kurenai’s expression hardened at the mention of her career’ state, her jaw clenching. Hinata held her breath, impatient to see the outcome of his reasoning.

“And wouldn’t it be an excellent mean for you to overrun his decision if you managed to catch the man he had let slip away, thanks to KONOHA?”

In this instant, Hinata knew he had won. 

Kurenai bit her lower lip, still obviously torn, but her team knew that no one could get back up after such a blow. On the other side of the table, Shino cleared his throat behind his high-collar sweater.

“Sure, maybe we won’t be able to come up with a satisfactory new lead, but even then, it’s a win-win for us. Either we successfully identify the author of the murders, or we quietly fail but will still have trained KONOHA on a complex case, making it better prepared for the next one.”

Kurenai laid back in her chair a moment, her brain assessing the situation, before clapping her hand on the table in a dramatic gesture.

“Fuck it” she told them, a determined fire burning in her eyes. “Let’s do this.”

Caught up in the euphoria of the moment, Hinata squeezed a blushing Shino in her arms as she thanked him repeatedly, Kiba and Kurenai chuckling at the scene, her mind still not processing yet all the consequences of such a decision.

*

  
“So, what’s the plan, now?” Asked Naruto, thrilled by Hinata’s news. “When is your intelligent computer telling us who the murderer is?”

The woman sat, tired, on one of the two chairs Naruto had discreetly brought inside the elevator shaft ahead of their meeting. The entire floor was still making fun of him for spending the previous day in the shaft and he didn’t want to give more grist to the mill by carting seats around in plain sight.

“It’s not that easy”, she avowed, Naruto’s grin melting down his face. “First, I need to turn every element of the case into data the program will be able to interpret and then, once we’ll have registered everything inside KONOHA, it will still be a few days of calculations before we get any kind of answer. Besides, even if we get anything, it won’t be plainly written “Mister So and So did it”, but look more like a list of statements instead.”

Naruto raised an eyebrow, his face clearly translating how underwhelmed he was by her explanations. Hinata must have felt sorry for him, for she offered him a condolence smile before getting more technical.

“For example, it will say ‘evidence #32 contradicts testimony #5’, or notice that all the crime scenes were visited by the same electricity company in the days prior to the murders, things like that. It will be up to us to make sense of it.”

Naruto suddenly felt like a deflected balloon. He had spent the entire day waiting like a child for the moment that they would meet, hoping that her team would lend his case their super-computer and now, Hinata was telling him that it would take days -if not weeks- for them to get a semblance of an answer? And not even the name of the murderer? Technology was definitely lacking in the future.

His brows furrowed as he let himself fall heavily in the remaining chair, Hinata still harboring a sad smile on her face. He mentally noted that it didn’t suit her at all. 

“Is there anything we can do?” He pleaded, desperate to help the computer start working as soon as possible. Hinata gave him a sly grin, her delicate eyes closing for a second, and hinted at the evidence box she had brought with her inside the shaft. 

“Yes, definitely”, she affirmed, a mischievous look on her face.

The following days passed in a blur.

Kakashi had called in Rock Lee, the friend both Tenten and Hinata had mentioned, for an interrogation, but it had proven just as inconclusive as the girls’ first one.

“I remember Hinata calling Tenten while we were chilling in front of the TV, around 9.30 p.m. maybe? After that, Tenten left to go and pick her up. At the time, I had assumed that the three of them must have improvised a little get together, for she didn’t come back before I went to bed, somewhere around 11 p.m.. Next thing I know, on the following morning, Tenten is waking me up in tears, sobbing about Neji being dead” had explained with a shockingly energetic stance the young man to Sakura and Naruto, punctuating every two sentences with a thumbs up that Sakura had deemed highly inappropriate. 

Moreover, on top of the extensive hours he was already putting on at work, Naruto was spending extra time every night helping Hinata browse through two decades of reports and evidence related to the Rinnegan killer affair, religiously consigning every little detail the way she had taught him to. From what they had figured out thus far, it seemed that, as long as they did not leave the elevator, they could spend as much time as they wanted together and although the double hours were proving exhausting, Naruto enjoyed the extraordinariness of their situation and Hinata’s company too much to truly care.

Though older than him and contrary to his first impression, Hinata was never being too condescending or haughty in the way of a Sasuke, and actually seemed to value and listen to every insight he could bring about the case, as he interspersed their studious moments together with anecdotes from the investigation he thought could interest her or make her laugh.

Their situation was surreal but, easy-going as he was, it took Naruto’s brain only a handful of hours to stop trying to blend 2008 Hinata and 2019 Hinata together and accept the older version that was seating him as a different, independent individual. For some mysterious reason he couldn’t really explain, every nightly gathering spent working silently next to one another slowly dragged her more and more into his world, erasings the crazy thoughts of another future timeline outside their elevator, making him feel like she had always lived and belonged to 2008 -and this elevator.

“How long do you think we’ll still need to finish preparing it all for KONOHA?” Had asked Naruto about ten days within their experiment.

Hinata dropped the paper she was studying onto her knees and stared at the metal ceiling, searching through her memory for an answer. In this position, her swan-like neck was completely visible, pale and delicate as always, free of any sinister bruises. As it should be. 

He hadn’t found the courage to bring up the marks again yet, but his stomach couldn’t help but knot at the memory of the young and fragile girl’s despair when he had mentioned her scarf, the violence in her heart when he had questioned her about the them, the hatred in her eyes when she had left the interrogation room. What could have happened for someone as seemingly calm, timid and composed as Ōtsutsuki Hinata to be beside oneself like that… And evolve into the woman she had become?

No, ever since their second encounter, Naruto hadn’t brought them up, but that didn’t mean he had forgotten about them. Actually, he was now convinced that they were somewhat important to their case, and so was Sasuke.

“Ōtsutsuki’s murder does not fit the Rinnegan killer’s narrative”, had asserted for the umpteenth time the smoking Assistant Inspector earlier that day during a team meeting. “He’s a man, and he was stabbed instead of gutted, when we know that the killer always gutt the victims he’s using to paint his symbol. Plus, the two girls are looking incredibly suspicious. The phone company’s bill proved that they’ve partially lied about the times they talked to one another-”

“This does not prove anything”, had snapped back Sakura, who was growing more and more annoyed of his theories. “He stabbed him cause he only guts women, that’s all. CSI confirmed that the blood used to draw the symbol was his and that there was a great chance it was his and not a copycat. And the girls were only slightly off with their timetable, which is totally understandable! Do you keep track of the clock every second of every day? I don’t think so!”

Both Kakashi and Naruto had tried to stop their boxing game, but Sakura and Sasuke nimbly knocked the two of them out of the ring and all they could do was watch them bicker helplessly from each side of the conference table.

“We should be done in four to five days, I would say, which would bring me to December 15 and you, October 6”, slowly answered Hinata, her eyes still double-checking her information in a corner of her mind. 

December 15. That left them only with an incredibly short window to enter all the data in the computer and get an answer before the dreadful date they sensed to be his next killing wave.

Nevertheless, it was hard for Naruto to focus and worry about a crime about to happen eleven years in the future when right now, in his present, his team was struggling so much to solve one that had already taken place.

“Here’s what I believe”, had proclaimed Sasuke over the short lunch break the squad had allowed itself as he alternated between his cigarette and his pork bento. Sakura immediately slammed her hand onto their desk, startling in the process Naruto who spilled most of his ramen on his pants.

“That’s enough.” Her calm yet menacing voice made her young colleague shiver, but Sasuke kept his cool and relaxed as if she had simply asked him to pass her the soy sauce.

“Come on, Sakura-san, hear me out” he smirked, pointing taunting chopsticks at the furious pinkette. He took one last smoke out of his cigarette and crushed it in his own food before leaning over the table closer to his teammates, his eyes darting around to make sure nobody else would listen to what he had to say.

“Here’s the deal: Ōtsutsuki Neji looks like that perfect, straight-a student type of guy, but inside, he hides a dark side.”

Sakura snorted incredibly loudly, but Sasuke ignored her.

“It turns out that our little victim has the hots for his younger cousin whom he was raised with, Ōtsutsuki Hinata, hypothesize that is corroborated by the creepy collection of pictures he had on display in his room.”

“Wait a minute… My sister has lots of pictures of the two of us in her bedroom, that doesn’t mean a thing, ya know!” Intervened Naruto, now feeling personally attacked by his colleague’s theory.

His teammate kept on going as if nothing had happened, a crazy light burning deep in his dark eyes. 

“For years and years, he manages to keep his incestuous pulsations at bay, but on that Saturday night, as the innocent high school girl is there studying next to him, something breaks inside of him. They are alone, it’s late. He makes a move. She rebuffs him, but it’s too late: he has crossed the Rubicon. He overpowers her, choking her not to alert anyone, and has his way with her. Then, she calls their common friend Tenten, asking her to pick her up and drive her home and on their way there, she tells her everything. Tenten, out of feminine solidarity, goes back to Neji to confront her and they fight. Maybe he molests her as well, who knows, and in a moment of self-defense, Tenten kills the guy. But she’s smart, she knows the Rinnegan killer is supposed to murder someone that night, and she decides to take her chances. She disguises the crime scene, and goes home like nothing happened, counting on Hinata the next morning to discover the body and call the cops.” He leaned back into his chair and lit up another cigarette. “The perfect crime.”

His colleagues blinked, speechless.

“Are you _high_?” Finally articulated Sakura, her green eyes wide open not blinking anymore. No reaction.

“Are you high?!” She asked again, this time way louder, grabbing the nearest thing her fingers could wrap around and throwing her stapler at Sasuke, who dodge it easily.

Naruto didn’t want to believe such fantasy. In the ten days that they had already spent together, he had come to appreciate and care for Hinata and really hoped that nothing this sordid had ever happened to her. Nonetheless… Sasuke had delivered his nonsense with such confidence that the young Sergeant was starting to wonder if he wasn’t onto something.

“Nice theory, Uchiha-kun, too bad it just got disproved.”

The three of them brutally acknowledged the smiling Inspector that stood a couple of meters away from them, a pile of files under his arms. Kakashi joyfully waved at them and eventually sat down, heavily dropping his reports on their desk. From the other side of the table, Sasuke was throwing daggers.

“What do you mean by ‘it just got disproved’?” Fumed the Assistant Inspector without any manners, so distraught by Kakashi’ statement that he had forgotten about the lit cigarette that hung from his lips and threatened to fall on his ironed shirt. Kakashi coughed before repositioning his mask and took the floor.

“I just heard back from CSI, Tenten was indeed laying on the bed at some point during the night at least, which contradicts her testimony about only being in the living room, but they only found hair and skins on the sheets, nothing else that could lead them to think they engaged in any kind of sexual activity. And it’s the same story for our victim’s: no trace of vaginal secretion, sperm or lube on his genitalia or body in general, nothing. However”, and with that, his brows furrowed hard, “They did confirm that the four glasses laying in the sink belonged to Neji, Tenten and Hinata, and that they all contained alcohol.”

“So… They were drinking? Even Ōtsutsuki Hinata, who’s a minor?” Asked Sakura in an attempt to make sense of the dense flow of information that their boss had dumped on them.

Damn. Naruto couldn’t believe it. It seemed like 2008 Hinata was definitely not as innocent as he had thought in the first place, then. No wonder that she looked like she did now if she had started drinking this young.

He didn’t have time to elaborate on his inner critic of his time colleague though, as a memory of the crime scene flashed before his eyes.

“Hatake-keibu!” He shouted way louder than he should have, their entire open space staring at him in curiosity, “What about the two glasses that were on the kotatsu?”

Behind his mask, Kakashi hid an embarrassed smile, his subordinate’s loud mouth attracting them some very unwanted attention. From the other side of the room, Inspector Asuma’s irritation was very palpable.

“They only had Neji’s fingerprints on them.”

Which meant that on the night of his murder, Hinata’s cousin had poured a glass to three people, with the last guest not drinking theirs. Did he know he was facing the Rinnegan killer and would soon meet his demise as he carefully brought his last visitor a welcome beverage? Naruto wondered.

“Anyway, thanks for playing, Uchiha-kun” giddily changed topics Kakashi, purposefully ignoring the aura of outrage coming from the raven-haired man that was choking on his cigarette across the table. “Now, anyone else longing to share their personal theory with the group?”

Next to him, Sakura, who was far from doing her best to hide her hysterical laughter, swiftly sobered up and raised her hand, a serious look on her face.

“Does it have to include an incestuous cousin?” She let out, before resuming her jeering with greater intensity while Sasuke flipped her over again and again.

Naruto didn’t say anything, but inside of him, he felt a huge relief at the announcement. Although the story behind what had happened that night before the murder was still a complete mystery, he was glad to know that nothing this bad had happened to his secret allied.

Maybe it was the extraordinary circumstances surrounding their encounters, or the fact that she was helping him on his case -unless it all went down to him having a fixer syndrome?- but that night, as they sat down as usual in the elevator to work through the mountain of reports from the Rinnegan killer’s case, Hinata appeared to him in a different light.

Truth be told, Naruto had never been the smoothest with the ladies. He did honestly believe that he was in all fairness quite charming and handsome, but his natural loud and exuberant demeanor -when not being repressed by his team’s dark energy- made him come across as _a bit too_ much and goofy and, because of this, he had never really had the chance to spent time with girls. 

Except Hinata wasn’t a girl, not anymore. 

He knew it was inherently wrong to be crushing on the time girl that was doing everything she could to help him solve his investigation, especially when she was four years older than him, but he couldn’t help it. The impossibility of their situation, the mystery that surrounded her involvement in the Rinnegan killer murders, the fact that she could never leave this elevator with him anyway, her serene nature and her maturity, all this elements made up the perfect explosive cocktail for his heart to gush all over her each time he checked out as discreetly as he could the frail and studious Crime analyst.

That night, for the first time since she was a teen and he had interrogated her, he took the time to truly look at her. 

Her main facial features had remained since her teens, except that her face had slimmed down, with time and exhaustion compounding the wrinkles at the corner of her hazy eyes. Her long, discolored green hair offered a bizarre contrast with her natural regal blue roots and bangs and her now body-hugging clothes left very little to Naruto’s incredibly fertile imagination. Her lavender pupils, two empty reflective ponds that gave her an ongoing absent-minded and eerie aura, were still as pastel as in her youth, hidden behind long, dark lashes.

In an attempt to artificially create as much human connection as possible with her within their short allocated time frame, he put the digital camera his family had given him for his birthday two years ago to good use and took multiple pictures of his place, his desk, his teammates and work friends on the next day to show them to Hinata.

“Oh, and this is one of me and my dad and sister”, he told her during an improvised break he had shamelessly staged, when the image of him and two redheads appeared on the small screen of the camera. Hinata let a little sound of awe while contemplating the picture, and Naruto, who was standing behind her seat and leaning over her shoulder, let his stare travel to her face, his eyes drawing her delicate profile over and over again to engrave it in his memory. A lopsided grin found a way to his mouth, but he promptly backed away when she turned to him.

“Is your mother a blonde, then?” She asked innocently, for both her father and sibling shared the same fiery hair, but Naruto didn’t answer.

The next evening, she had stepped into the elevator as usual, an excited timid smile on her lips as she gave him in turn a glimpse of her own life as well, except that she did it on the biggest phone Naruto had ever seen and whose resolution put his camera to shame.

On the next day, he brought her his favorite instant ramen. She retaliated with two cups of oden from the konbini with her favorite garnish, all vegetarian. She even laughed at his miffed pout when he forcefully tried the konjac that was floating in the broth to please her before spitting it all back into the cup.

Every night, he told her about his day, the investigation’s progress, his relationship with his team, and she listened to everything he had to say silently, chiming up from time to time only to give him some advice. He liked that. For the first time in a really long time, he felt important. 

Occasionally, she would also tell him about her squad, but in general, she was way less expensive than him and a more private person altogether, so such confidences were rare. A remnant of the young girl she was at seventeen, no doubt. She almost made him regretfully leave the elevator everyone, and he couldn’t help but wonder how long their little arrangement would keep on going. 

*

  
Hinata had feared a resurgence of ghostly apparitions after taking on the Rinnegan killer case but, to her surprise, she had yet to find herself haunted by Neji’s soul-piercing eyes again. To be perfectly honest, her new time schedule may have been responsible for it: she was taking her collaboration with Naruto extremely seriously, acting way more seriously than she probably should for her own well-being and basically working herself to the grave, dark circles around her eyes growing bigger and bigger by the hour. However, there was something intoxicating and mind-numbing in losing herself in files and reports by his side each night, like alcohol back in her college days -minus the burning taste. 

Contrary to her first impression on him and despite his attention deficit and rather big mouth -the boy didn’t know how to remain silent and kept insisting on showing her pictures of his life-, Naruto had proved himself useful. With the young man’s help, they had achieved translating the 1986 and 1997 murders into comprehensible data for KONOHA within two weeks, Hinata indexing everything they wrote down the next day with Kiba’s help and were near the finish line with the 2008 reports, leaving Neji’s part for the end.

She had known from the start that such a moment would come, but it didn’t make it any easier. The anxiety from seeing her name, Neji’s or Tenten’s leafing through a file had been eating her alive, burning holes in her stomach, and she hadn’t been able to swallow solid food in days.

Her team was also getting worried by her attitude, she could sense it. The only night she had gone home lately had only been to pick up a fresh batch of clothes and to take pictures of the place for Naruto, who had proudly showed her the one-bedroom apartment he had recently bought the evening before. Embarrassment had inflamed her face as she showed him photos of her own home, her eyes picking up on his silent astonishment, for you could have easily fit a family of five in her flat. He hadn’t commented on it any further though, apart for a standard compliment, which had taken a weight off her shoulders. No one around the office knew she had that kind of money, but with Naruto, she was open to making an exception. After all, he already knew her secret identity and had experienced her family wealth first hand years ago when meeting with her father and their family lawyer, so her luxurious apartment shouldn’t necessarily be a huge surprise to him.

The feeling of something heavy gradually falling on her back woke her up, and she blinked in the half-darkness of the office as her eyes got used to their environment.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up”, apologized in a whisper Shino, his low and raspy voice hitting Hinata’s sleepy ears with a delay. She gently hummed, pulling the jacket he had wrapped around her shoulder closer to herself.

“Have I been down for long?” She croaked, her brain doing her best to emerge. Shino nodded, and she let out a bashful smile.

“How is your migraine doing?”

“Fine, thank you Shino-kun.”

She didn’t know if it was related in any way to her little elevator adventures or just the unconscious manifestation of her overbearing anxieties, but she had been getting more and more migraines lately, sharp and acute short bursts of pain drilling holes in her skull and leaving her feeling even more worn out than she was before.

“I believe you should head home, Hinata-san, because you seem exhausted.” Hinata vaguely mumbled back, burying her head back between her crossed arms on the table. Shino’s footsteps echoed in the room, followed by the creek and gentle closing of their office door. Focusing on her breathing, she finally managed to pump enough oxygen in her body to wake long enough to grab the phone located in her back pocket and check the time. 11:06 p.m.

“Damn it.” She abruptly got up and rushed outside of her office, frantically pressing the call button of the elevator. Even if she wasn’t in the physical condition to work with him tonight, they had never missed a night yet and although they didn’t even technically simultaneously exist together in the same spatial plane, she had grown accustomed to his warm presence and felt like she owed it to him to at least excuse herself for the night. The elevator slowly reached her floor, and she practically fell into his arms when she dashed through the doors.

“Uzumaki-san”, she managed to get out, breathless, “I apologize but I think that I’m too tired to work with you tonight…” She expelled in a breath. When she finally raised her head, her stare crossed with his, his crystal clear sky eyes making no effort whatsoever to hide their disappointment. He truly had no filters.

Finally registering that she was pressed against his chest, she blushed and pulled back, noticing eventually the fuming take-away cups he was holding in both hands.

“What’s that?” She asked, intrigued, as she straightened up, her breathing leveling up. Naruto put down the cups on one of the chairs he had gotten them, and scratched the back of his head, an embarrassed smile on his face.

“Oh, nothing, I just had figured out that… Well, last time, you mentioned that you really like zenzai so, I bought us some, ya know.” He chuckled nervously. “But please, go rest, we’ve been working non-stop for the past two weeks, you deserve it.”

Hinata’s jaw fell open, provoking an internal self-scolding for once again harboring an unflattering expression in front of her younger partner, but she couldn’t help but feel incredibly discombobulated by such a sweet, simple gesture. Seeing how he had gotten out of his way to get her her favorite dessert and the look of blighted hope in his sunny day eyes, she felt like it would be too awful from her to leave him now. With a touched smile on her face, she shook her head at him.

“Staying five minutes for dessert won’t kill me”, she proclaimed before grabbing one of the cups and sitting down on one side of the elevator, the dusty floor staining her hands. He widely grinned at her and sat on the other side of the shaft, digging straight away into his soup.

They made small talk for a couple of minutes, Naruto telling her about his day as always and the current state of the case, before letting the conversation lull awkwardly, silence uncomfortable settling between the two of them.

“Why did you dye your hair?” 

The question came out of nowhere, and the Sergeant deliberately avoided her stare by fishing a mochi out of his cup. “You had real pretty hair, it’s a shame.” Hinata’s lips instinctively vanished into a thin line.

“Because I was tired of men complimenting me on how pretty my hair was”, she soberly answered, her interlocutor’s ears turning red. The young man mumbled a “sorry” and Hinata dismissed it with a light laughter.

“It’s okay, Uzumaki-san, don’t you worry. When you’ll be as old as I am, you’ll realize that most words wash over you.”

He swallowed his mochi and frowned his brows hard, almost as if he was trying to solve some kind of extremely complex math problem.

“You cannot be that old, though”, he hypothesized, obviously trying to get her actual age. “Seventeen plus eleven, that’s… Twenty-eight? That’s not old at all, ya know!”

Hinata bit her lower lip to prevent her from smiling again. Seeing him struggle with such a simple addition was beyond adorable.

“What about you, Uzumaki-san? How old are you?”

He puffed his chest, trying to make himself look more impressive. “Twenty-four”, he proudly answered.

“That’s quite young.”

“Pfff, don’t let this handsome face fool you!” He claimed playfully, “I may look young but trust me, I’m a man!” Hinata’s face must have betrayed her inner giggle, for he repeated “I’m serious! I’m a man!” a couple of times while the Hyūga downed her cup to hide her amusement. She swallowed the lukewarm syrupy liquid, trying her best to ignore Naruto's intense blue eyes on her.

“Why do you dress the way you do?”

This time, Hinata didn’t smile nor laugh.

“Are we back to judging my body?” She snapped at him, her tone devoid of its usual warmth. His face remaining straight, Naruto slowly dismissed her statement.

“Every time you showed up at the precinct for questioning, you were dressed in quite a… how to put it… traditional fashion?” He tried, walking on thin ice. “And your current outfit kinda goes the opposite direction.”

Hinata loosened up a notch. She didn’t appreciate people commenting on her physical appearance but she had to admit that for someone who had repeatedly seen her wearing her private school uniform or expensive, plain, conservative outfits, her eternal skinny jeans, heavy boots and tank tops as well as her home-made greenish hair offered an interesting contrast. 

“I started drinking when I left for college”, she finally let out, her eyes holding Naruto’s gaze, her empty voice echoing against the cold walls of their cube. “And most of my drinking buddies dressed up like that. I eventually left all my bad habits behind, yet, I kept the clothes.” Naruto slightly rocked his head, not interrupting her. 

“I’ve always felt like a misfit anyway, so now, my appearance reflects this state of fact.” She was too rich and too good at her job anyway to risk anything real apart from dirty looks for her hierarchy and colleagues in the hall now, or whispers on the streets.

They remained silent again, both staring at one another, time standing still. Hinata’s eyes lingered on his perfectly symmetrical facial features, his well-defined jawline, his aquiline nose, those deep sky-like eyes and sandy hair, his broad shoulders. Unlike her, he was dressed up to society's expectations and looked the part, too, when Hinata had never been beautiful enough for Japanese standards to start with.

“Hyūga-san?”

“Yes?” She answered in a murmur.

“That night”, and he didn’t have to clarify _which_ night he was referring to for Hinata to understand what he was talking about, “Something bad happened, right? I mean, outside from your cousin’s murder, ya know.”

Hinata deliberately remained silent, although she knew she would have been better off stuttering some lame answer, her lack of response being way more eloquent than any see-through excuse she could have come up with.

She closed her eyes, the back of her head meeting with the cold metal of the shaft’s walls. She slowly inhaled through her nose, focusing all her energy on the air flow entering her body. On the other side of the elevator, Naruto changed position, shaking the cabin slightly.

“Why won’t you just tell me what happened?”

“Why do you care so much about it? Why do you hang so much to it? It happened eleven years ago, Uzumaki-san, it can’t be changed.”

She should have seen it coming. Of course he would try to question her about the affair again. If she had thought otherwise, she was incredibly naive, then. On the other side of the shaft, Naruto’s face hardened but she hardly cared. 

Neji’s death always triggered something deep down, making her automatically withdraw into herself and hide behind a shield of aggressiveness to dissuade any attacker to pursue the matter further. Unfortunately for her, Naruto was too oblivious to the room’s mood in general to pick up on this kind of detail. 

“Except it _is_ happening right now for me!” He shouted, getting on his soapbox. “It’s happening right now for you! Maybe you’re right and I can’t help the you of today, but what if we could save your past self in my world? What if, thanks to you and your team and all your knowledge from the future, we could make things right…”

“But you won’t! You won’t make it right Uzumaki-san, you won’t!” In the grip of emotion, her back had left the wall of the elevator and she was now leaning so much over the floor that her stiff leg joins were ardently protesting. “And you want to know how I know this? Because I’ve _lived_ it! I’ve been through the living hell that was this investigation, I helplessly watched your team tear us down to pieces, claiming everywhere that Neji had…! I had to deal with my schoolmates’ looks of pity for the rest of my schooling, endure their gossipy whispers each time I walked down a hall or entered a room, and listen to them basically congratulate the Rinnegan killer for murdering him, cause such an evil monster shouldn’t have been left alive. Do you understand?”

“You don’t have to act like this, ya know! I understand that you’re angry at the way your cousin’s case was handled in your timeline but…”

“Angry? _Angry?_ ‘Angry’ doesn’t even start to cover it, Uzumaki-san! You made me and Tenten appear like a bunch of liars, you harassed her til she…” She was trembling with rage, her body and soul totally dominated by emotions, but she didn’t care. “This ugly crime, injustice, it killed us. And you and your team, you killed us twice. You hunt us down to the grave, until you were sure we would never feel alive or ourselves again!”

Naruto’s face suddenly looked incredibly close to hers and she finally realized that, somewhere in the midst of her violent outburst, they had both gotten up to face each other. She let the clammy air of the shaft enter and exit her panting mouth, an intense exhaustion feeling washing all over her body as she slowly transitioned from one emotion to another.

It was unfair, immature of her to dumb a decade-long bottled-up despair, frustration and hatred on the ingenious man. Yelling her feelings wouldn’t change a thing or make Neji come back, but she needed to finally get it all out of her system and now that the valves were opened, she couldn’t stop herself.

“We… I could still make it right” Naruto tried, his left hand raising towards her before dropping back to his side mid-air at the sight of her trembling pout and rolling tears.

“You’re wrong.” There was no way to make it right and it was highly presumptuous of him to even suggest it. 

No, no, beyond anything, it would be unfair; how could that Hinata have it easier when herself had had to go through all this crap alone? No, she couldn’t allow it. 

Hot liquid ran down her cheeks. “How could you even start to apprehend what happened, with your perfect little life and your perfect little face and your perfect little job” She enunciated, venting her spleen on him as she pressed for the doors to open. “Stop pretending like you care about how I feel. All you’re interested in is to find the killer so you can finally get the recognition you are longing for!”

And without a second glance, she hurriedly left the elevator and turned out back on her floor, her fists so clenched that her knuckles were white. 

She knew she was unfair to him and had merely treated him like an emotional punching bag. Damn, he was only a child still, she was the adult out of the two of them. She should know better.

She inanely stood in front of the elevator for a couple of minutes more, anger and sadness both leaving her, uncovering a hole in her chest that guilt filled up almost immediately. If she could have, she would have rushed to his office to apologize. When had she become temperamental?

In a fitting surge of karmic retribution, a painful sensation emerged right under the thick bone of her forehead, and she eventually walked back to her office to gather her stuff and exit the building. After half an hour in this tiny, overheated elevator and with her growing headache, she welcomed the cold, mid December night air with unconcealed pleasure. She really needed to calm down.

Nervously wriggling her right leg against the cement of the precinct forecourt, she assessed her options, the cold biting her cheeks. She could order a cab and just go home, or she could enjoy an early wintery walk to clear her mind. Eventually, she dared to take a hand out of her warm pocket and grabbed her phone, hesitantly scrolling through her contact list, her thumb stopping over a particular name. Her lips vanished into a thin line. She wasn’t too sure about her next action. 

She tergiversated a brief instant more, and finally pressed the call button as she started to roam the streets of Taitō City while heading for her apartment located fifty minutes away in the Northern Kojimachi area, into the neighboring Chiyoda ward. At the fifth ringtone, someone picked up.

She was within sight of Kokyogaien National Garden when a silhouette already waiting for her generously waved at her in the distance, wrapped up in a thick parka.

“Good evening!”, greeted her the man seated on the bench as she got closer to him. “I hope you don’t mind’, he added, a joyful smile on his tired face, his bowl cut slightly tousled by the gentle wind, “But I brought some friends with me.” 

Hinata glanced at the plastic bag resting next to Lee and whose form betrayed its content. She let out a quiet exhalation of amusement and awkwardly sat down on the other side of their owner, her hands diving between her closed thighs for warmth.

The distant cry of the city filled the space between them as she tried to figure out a way to broach why she had dragged him out of his cosy living room at such an ungodly hour. Next to her, Lee, unlike his usual self, remained quiet.

To any exterior spectator, it may have seemed like he was simply enjoying the fresh air of a midnight stroll, his eyes lost in the beyond of the road they faced but Hinata knew that he was simply kindly waiting for her to find the strength to formulate what was on her mind.

“Sorry again for calling you out of the blue”, she began, Lee rocking his body back and forth on their seat, making the dry wood beneath them creak. “And thank you for meeting me here, I appreciate it.”

The man at her side smiled at the open road before them and nodded, an understanding look upon his face. “You don’t have to thank me, Hinata. What are friends for”, and he fished a can out of his plastic bag that he offered her, “If not to show up when you need them the most?”

Hinata politely refused the drink with a shake of the head, an automatic sorry smile stretching her lips. Her body had instinctively reacted to the sight of the small metal can before her brain could even have a chance to actually analyze the object and try to perniciously convince her that a sip wouldn’t hurt. Technically, her brain wouldn’t be wrong though: a sip wouldn’t hurt. The following liters, however...

Lee insisted, pushing the can towards her with insistence. “Don’t you think I know you, now?” Hinata’s refusal made him grin. “That’s juice.”

Oh.

“I thought it was beer. You surely have a really good memory”, commented Hinata as she gracefully accepted the can with both hands, her head bowed almost imperceptibly. Lee chuckled and fumbled with his bag again, searching for his own drink.

“Well, I switched to stronger alcohols long ago anyway, so there was absolutely zero chance for it to be a beer” he claimed, his hand finally emerging from the plastic with a flask of liquor that he nimbly opened and voraciously knocked back in front of Hinata’s aghast eyes. 

She didn’t remember him as such a heavy drinker. He caught on bewilderment and chuckled again, the hollowness of the shudders rising from his throat painfully pinching her heart. “Don’t worry, I have more.”

Like that was what had her worried.

She wanted to ask him how his wife was doing, but she refrained at the last second. They had lost their son around the time that she had been transferred to her current precinct and she knew neither of them had totally recovered from it -like one could.

Lee gulped down his second bottle, the back of his hand pressing against his mouth right after to wipe his lips.

“It’s funny” he finally drawled. 

Neither of them was laughing. 

“It’s funny because, before you called me, I had actually been thinking about you quite a lot lately. Been thinking about everything, really, reflecting on my life, you see. And I’ve been thinking about how, ever since that time, tragedy has been following me around. It’s sticking to my clothes, my skin, lurking in the shadows. Waiting for the moment to knock. And hell, does it know when to knock.” The two empty glass flasks fell on the floor, their racket against the hard concrete making Hinata pull faces as he sloppily reached for the plastic bag next to him.

“You shouldn’t be drinking that much”, she finally cautioned as he opened his third drink, his movement already less precise than at the beginning of their conversation. Was it her place to say this? She didn’t know for sure, but felt that, if anyone should mention it, should be her. She used to drink too. Never so shamelessly in the open, in front of a sober audience on a street bench, no, but she did too. At places where it was socially acceptable. Gatherings, parties with friends, fun evenings at the bar. She was always too afraid to drink on her own. In her mind, that was what separated her from the people like Lee. Her drinking was only social and she believed that if she held onto that lie, she wouldn’t become a drunk. And which young undergrad student isn’t partying every night of the week at 20? 

Lee shrugged, a sad smile on his lips. It broke her heart.

“I remember telling you the same thing one day”, he noted, a hint of amusement in his alcohol-induced high-pitched voice, “And I remember you not listen either.”

Hinata chuckled briefly. It sounded hollow and cold.

She laid her head back against the hardwood of the bench’s backrest and, exhausted, tilted her head towards her old friend who kept on contemplating his opened bottle, thoughtful.

“Lee.” He didn’t move a muscle. “Lee, I’m working on the Rinnegan killer case.”

Still no reaction.

Maybe it was because of the tiredness. Or the outpouring of emotions she had been experiencing for the last couple of hours. Tears unexpectedly blurred her vision so much that all her retinas could perceive were dims of faint lights and swarming darknesses and all she could hear was the the hoarse sob coming out of her throat, filling the lull that seized any occasion to squeeze itself between her and her long, forgotten friend.

Lee just hung in there, on the edge of their wooden bench, the heavy opened flask sinking deeper and deeper in his hands towards the cold rocky floor, before it finally completely managed to escape his grip and crashed, shards of glass and droplets of liquor instinctively hitting Hinata’s legs. 

His silence was the worst. Her sobbing was intolerable. It felt like they both resided in parallel universes, able to see one another but not communicate, trapped in their own suffering and despair, and for a second, Hinata questioned if she had really returned to her timeline after leaving the elevator shaft. How could this be their reality? How could Lee and her deal with the very ugliness that had taken over their lives, grinding them to pieces, and be expected to keep on going?

They couldn’t. She could't. 

Lee was as hermetic to her pain as she was to his. They were both hurting in their own, intimate, unshareable way and all they could do to alleviate some of the suffering was to grief next to one another on that bench.

The wet trails left behind them by her pearl-size tears were quickly freezing against her delicate moon-like skin, but she didn’t care. An awful feeling was pressing against her chest, painful creeping in corners of her mind, and the lingering migraine that had been patiently waiting in her forehead brutally manifested itself, prompting her to instinctively bring a hand to her head. 

“Do you ever wonder what happened that night?” She managed to ask him after what felt like hours of painful silence, trying her best to ignore how her sobbing was making her headache so much worse.

A sniff indicated to her that he was crying too, and she decided not to push the matter any further.

“Lee” she bawled, as she latched on the icy juice can resting on her laps that was turning so burningly cold against her fingers and palms that it was like her skin was melting on its supple enveloppe, her neighbor weeping lightly, gently, like a swift may shower on a living room’s window. “Is it wrong that I don’t want to know?” 

She took a deep breath through her tears, her stare doing its best to focus on a tiny pebble on the road to keep her grounded in her reality, their reality. “Lee, is it wrong that I don’t want to find out who did it? That I don’t want to know about Neji’s killer? I just want to leave it all behind me. I’ve tried, but it won’t go away.”

It was like her soul had been sucked out of her body through her mouth. The words finally out, she felt hollowed, deprived of any humanity and this time, she indulged in her pain, crying and sobbing til she felt completely dry. 

She wished she could take it all back. She wished she could have said no to Naruto and not introduced the case to her team. She didn’t want to try to turn the page, it was all too painful. She didn’t want to relive any of it anymore, for stitching the wound close was more hurtful than letting it bleed in the open air. 

“No, it’s not, Hinata” finally concurred Lee in a muffled whisper, and that was all she needed to hear to be able to get up face herself in the mirror the next morning.

Her head was killing her the next day as she quietly sat to her desk, guilt still serenely looming at the back of her mind for how she had treated her young time companion. Naruto was young and naive, still full of hopes and dreams and she knew she had been purposefully hurtful. All she wished for now was to find him again tonight and apologize… If he even showed up which, following her little crazy outburst, was less than certain.

The thought that she had made him feel uncomfortable or abashed was actually worrying her way more than she would have ever imagined. Regret squeezed her heart and furrowed her brows and as she half-heartedly input data into KONOHA, she furiously went through all of the different scenarii that could happen later on that evening and how to offer her apologies. 

She had remained so deeply in thoughts for such a time that Sarutobi Konohamaru and Kazamatsuri Moegi’ sensational entrance had the effect of a cold shower on her body, freezing her heart and making both Shino and her jump from their chairs, unsettled by the impromptu visit of the two Assistant Inspectors.

“Inuzuka!” Thundered Konohamaru as he stormed inside the office, his female colleague raising her eyes to the heavens at his loud demeanor. “Is that true that you’re working on the Rinnegan killer case and didn’t even tell me about it, you dog?”

Skilfully dodging his partner’s call-to-order nudge, Konohamaru heavily sat down on Kiba’s desk and the two men high-fived each other, Hinata’s teammate immediately barking back at the intruder.

“Told you that I was working on the front-line of crime fighting! Thanks to Shino, we are going to identify and arrest Japan’s biggest serial killer and become huge stars, while you and your team will keep on kissing Ebisu-keibu’s butt for the rest of your lives!”

“Nay, I’m too talented for that” Stated Konohamaru with a cocky smile. On the other side of their shared table, Shino had completely disappeared behind his computer screen and Hinata almost wished she could have made herself invisible too. Kiba and Konohamaru in the same room could prove difficult to deal with. “Furthermore, our team got assigned to the case by the Assistant Commissioner himself, so it looks like we are going to have to collaborate all together!”

“The Assistant Commissioner? Hatake Kakashi? The man that lead the Rinnegan killer investigation last time?”

“Himself!”

“Why dig up such an old case?” Grunted Kiba while Hinata was trying her best to focus on her data. “There hasn’t been any new victim in over a decade!”

“Apparently, someone from your team predicted that the killer would be back soon-”

_Oh oh._ Hinata’s head retreated in-between her shoulders.

“-and that did not fall on deaf ears so, just to be safe, they decided to put us back on the case, which means that we’re going to need all those boxes and files back.”

At the news, Kiba protested energetically. “Are you crazy?” He objected with a scandalized tone, “You guys can consult them here as much as you want to but the reports stay here! Hinata needs them for KONOHA and with their combined abilities, they’ll solve this case before you.” 

Hinata knew that Kiba meant well by saying this, but she would prefer for him to not praise her nor the program too much, especially in front of outsiders. Not only was she feeling really uncomfortable with receiving compliments but that could give them false ideas about her own skills or KONOHA’s which, as proven by Naruto’s reaction when he had ultimately understood how the tool worked, could only lead to disappointment.

Next to Konohamaru, Moegi didn’t seem too thrilled about the prospect of working on the Rinnegan killer case either. “I don’t really see what they are expecting us to do” she complained with an annoying whiny voice. “It’s not like we can predict where the next killing will happen.”

The remark had Hinata and Kiba instinctively look at each other while from behind his screen, Shino raised from the dead, the three of them exchanging all-knowing glances. 

Without saying a word, the Assistant Inspector and the Crime analyst rushed behind Shino’ seat who was already opening SUNA, inputting the addresses of all the murders into the software. Konohamaru and Moegi soon joined them, disconcerted by the team’s behavior, but none of them actually bothered to explain what was happening. As Shino pressed “enter” on his keyboard, all five of them held their breath, the program loading its answer. A shiver ran through the group.

“Minato or Kōtō City” proclaimed Shino, unshakable behind his glasses. A breath of exasperation escaped Konohamaru, Kiba sympathetically patting Shino’ shoulder like the student was responsible for the imprecise answer of SUNA, the lack of data making it impossible to accurately predict the next crime location.

Hinata’s brows furrowed.

Back in 1986, the Rinnegan killer had killed three times in Taitō City. Then, in 1997, he had killed in the adjacent ward of Chiyoda City, South-West of Taitō City. Same story in 2008 where he had targeted Chūō City, the neighboring South-East ward of Chiyoda. 

Four wards surrounded Chūō City, the place of the last murders: Chiyoda, Sumida, Kōtō and Minato. Chiyoda having already been targeted in the past, the ward was out of the question. Sumida was located north when the killer was obviously progressing towards the South of Tokyo. This left them indeed with Minato or Kōtō…

Hinata discreetly separated from the group and headed back to her desk, her hands feverishly rummaging through her drawers, on the lookout for the only thing that could help her focus in this very instant.

“Did I miss something or is this office the headquarters of the Tokyo Police knitting club?” Snickered Konohamaru at the sight of Hinata delicately unfolding her work and setting up her ball of yarn on her laps, quickly silenced by both Shino and Kiba.

There must have been some kind of pattern in the murders’ locations, a reason, obvious or tricky, for the Rinnegan killer to move the way he did? 

She wrapped a loop of red yarn around her finger and pushed her knitting needle through it to create a stitch that added to the ones already present on the aluminum stick. A pattern. Kōtō City or Minato City.

There must be a way to figure out which one was going to get picked.

_Ok, let’s keep things simple. You’re an everyday joe, just minding your own business and killing three people every eleven years in Tokyo. How do you get to your victims?_

The answer was rail, obviously. Its tentacular network was the city’s the primary mode of transportation and with 40 million daily users, he wouldn’t look suspicious. 

In 1986, the Namikaze murders happened next to Nezu Station, served by the Chiyoda Line, and the Umino murder next to the Inarichō Station, served by the Ginza Line. There was no connection between those two stations and you could not even do a change over between them. 

Hinata finished her row and switched the needles to start the next one, switching from a stockinette to a reverse stitch in the process, impulsing a relief motif.

In 1997, you had the Uchiha next to Asakusabashi Station, with the Chūō–Sōbu and Asakusa Lines, as well as Yakushi next to Ochanomizu Station, which is served by the Chūō-Sōbu, Chūō and Marunouchi Lines. One line in common, but no easy way to access the places of the previous murders.

The rhythmic pounding of the needles banging together gave her brain the tempo.

In 2008, the Katō-Senju lived near Shintomichō Station with the Yurakucho Line, and Ōtsutsuki next to Tsukijishijō Station and the Ōedo Line. You could change over at Tsukishima Station this time, however, none of those stations easily connected anyway… Was he just taking a cab?

Once again, the stitches accumulated on one of her sticks and she moved on to the next wale, changing hands again.

If he had been in his twenties the first time around, he had probably stuck to the railway, opting for a line that he knew, like the one he lived or worked on…

She suddenly dropped her scarf, her head raising towards her audience that had been religiously waiting for her to say something the whole time.

“Is there a line going through all the wards where a murder occurred?” She brutally asked, her brain boiling from the excess of information that was coursing through it.

“The Tokyo Metro Hibiya Line?” Suggested timidly Moegi.

“But it’s not even the closest station to any of the scenes”, interjected Kiba as Hinata resumed her knitting to finish her row. She contemplated her latest progress, checking for any mistake, but the pattern was perfect.

“It doesn’t matter”, she continued, her drawer loudly closing as she put away her gear and faced the gang to detail her trail of thought. “Ueno station, Hibiya Line’s biggest stop in Taitō City, is only a fifteen minute walk away from the Namikaze place, that’s still doable. And it was even closer to the Umino’s apartment.”

“Same thing for other murders”, took over Konohamaru on the other side of the table. “Akihabara is a big stop in Chiyoda City, and again, must be less than ten minutes away from both the Uchiha and the Yakushi.”

“And if you consider Tsukiji station his base of operations for Chūō City in 2008, that leads us to…”

“Roppongi in Minato City”, deadpanned Shino from his chair, the revelation laying heavily on them, washing over their dumbfounded minds as they realized that, if their reasoning held water, they may have accidentally been a step closer to flush the Rinnegan killer out.

Konohamaru broke the silence first, an awkwardly blanched and squeaky voice making its way out of his lips. “We should gather up more often” he joked, probably trying to ease up the mood of the room but only managing to come out as bashful, “There wouldn’t be any unsolved crime left in Japan, then.”

The three Assistant Inspectors kept on dissecting their find and theorize about the Rinnegan killer, but Hinata didn’t hear a word of their conversation for she was already somewhere else. In half a dozen of hours, she would enter the precinct’s elevator and excitedly tell the innocent and adorable blond Sergeant all about their discovery, explaining him with great details the ramifications of her reasoning and where the murderer probably get on the train and she would chuckle at the sight of his eyes opening wide at the news, his grin eating his face, his own enthusiasm warming the shaft like a brazier on a cold winter night outside. She would even find the right words to apologize and they would resume their collaboration as if nothing had happened, each late gathering bringing them one step closer to an answer Hinata knew she dreaded to hear but, with the help of her impossible teammate, felt ready to face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaaaaaand congratulations for getting through this hell of a chapter!
> 
> As said at the beginning, I'm not satisfied with it so you deserve all my respect for sticking til the end!
> 
> The part with the metro and the wards is 100% certainly impossible to understand if you don't have a map of Tokyo right next to you, my apologies again for that.
> 
> I promise I'll reward you with the best fluff and smut I can write next time ahahah and yes, Sasuke is AGAIN doing weird shit with his cigarettes but that's how it goes in this story 👼
> 
> I hope everyone is doing ok in this wild times and see you next Monday if I manage to stick to my own schedule! Lots of love!

**Author's Note:**

> Congratulations for making it til the end!
> 
> For this story, I was inspired by the prompt of the excellent Korean drama "Signal" where three cops from different decades cooperate to stop a serial killer by communicating though a time-bending walkie-talkie. However, since I haven't quite finished the show yet, that's pretty much where the similarities end. For the Police aspect, I must shamelessly admit that most of my knowledge of ranks and organization are based on my twenty years of "Detective Conan" readings so, if I'm incorrect, you know why 😂
> 
> I also tried my best to implicitly convey the characters' relationships throughout the use of honorifics and hope that I didn't do any big mistake with them; if I went a tad overboard, let me know and I'll try to change it for the next two parts.
> 
> Anyway, thank you so much for dropping by and taking the time to read my work! Next week, the fluff and flirting will start I promiiiiise but the plot will remain ahah


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